
Class _ 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 



MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 



KINGS, QUEENS 
AND PAWNS 

An American Woman 
at the Front 



BY 

MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 

AUTHOR OF 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1915, 
Bt The Curtis Publishing Company 



Copyright, 1915, 
By George H. Doran Company 




HQV 221915 



DI.A414715 



CONTENTS 



Belgians 



CHAPTER 

For King and Country 

I. Taking a Chance 

II. "Somewhere in France" . 

III. La Panne .... 

IV. " 'Twas a Famous Victory' 
V. A Talk with the King of the 

VI. The Cause .... 

VII. The Story With an End . 

VIII. The Night Raid on Dunkirk 

IX. No Man's Land . 

X. The Iron Division . 

XI. At the House of the Barrier 

XII. Night in the Trenches . 

XIII. "Wipers" .... 

XIV. Lady Decies' Story . 
XV. Running the Blockade 

XVI. The Man of Ypres . 

XVII. In the Line of the "Mitrailleuse' 

XVIII. French Guns in Action . 

XIX. "I Nibble Them" 

XX. Dunkirk: From My Journal 

XXI. Tea with the Air-fighters 

XXII. The Women at the Front 

XXIII. The Little "Sick and Sorry" House 

XXIV. Flight .... 
XXV. Volunteers and Patriots 

XXVI. A Luncheon at British Headquarters 

XXVII. A Strange Party .... 



PAGE 

5 
9 
23 
32 
39 
50 
63 
7i 
80 

87 
101 
114 
122 

135 
154 
164 
176 
190 
200 
212 
216 
219 
230 
238 
247 

255 
260 
271 



CHAPTER 




PAGE 


XXVIII. 


Sir John French 


. 277 


XXIX. 


Along the Great Bethune Road 


. 284 


XXX. 


The Military Secret 


. 293 


XXXI. 


Queen Mary of England . 


. 300 


XXXII. 


The Queen of the Belgians . 


. . 314 


XXXIII. 


The Red Badge of Mercy . 


. 325 


XXXIV. 


In Terms of Life and Death . . 


. 336 


XXXV. 


The Losing Game » . . 


. 342 


XXXVI. 


How Americans Can Help . 


. 353 


XXXVII. 


An Army of Children . , 


. 361 



KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 



KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

FOR KING AND COUNTRY 



MARCH in England is spring. Early in the 
month masses of snowdrops lined the paths 
in Hyde Park. The grass was green, the roads hard 
and dry under the eager feet of Kitchener's great 
army. For months they had been drilling, struggling 
with the intricacies of a new career, working and wait- 
ing. And now it was spring, and soon they would be 
off. Some had already gone. 

"Lucky beggars I" said the ones who remained, and 
counted the days. 

And waiting, they drilled. Everywhere there were 
squads : Scots in plaid kilts with khaki tunics ; less pic- 
turesque but equally imposing regiments in the field 
uniform, with officers hardly distinguishable from 
their men. Everywhere the same grim but cheerful 
determination to get over and help the boys across the 
Channel to assist in holding that more than four hun- 
dred miles of battle line against the invading hosts of 
Germany. 

Here in Hyde Park that spring day was all the 
panoply of war: bands playing, the steady tramp of 
numberless feet, the muffled clatter of accoutrements, 
the homage of the waiting crowd. And they deserved 

5 



6 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

homage, those fine, upstanding men, many of them 
hardly more than boys, marching along with a fine, 
full swing. There is something magnificent, a con- 
tagion of enthusiasm, in the sight of a great volunteer 
army. The North and the South knew the thrill dur- 
ing our own great war. Conscription may form a 
great and admirable machine, but it differs from the 
trained army of volunteers as a body differs from a 
soul. But it costs a country heavy in griefs, does a 
volunteer army; for the flower of the country goes. 
That, too, America knows, and England is learning. 

They marched by gaily. The drums beat. The 
passers-by stopped. Here and there an open carriage 
or an automobile drew up, and pale men, some of them 
still in bandages, sat and watched. In their eyes was 
the same flaming eagerness, the same impatience to 
get back, to be loosed against the old lion's foes. 

For King and Country ! 

All through England, all through France, all 
through that tragic corner of Belgium which remains 
to her, are similar armies, drilling and waiting, equally 
young, equally eager, equally resolute. And the thing 
they were going to I knew. I had seen it in that 
mysterious region which had swallowed up those who 
had gone before; in the trenches, in the operating 
rooms of field hospitals, at outposts between the con- 
fronting armies where the sentries walked hand in 
hand with death. I had seen it in its dirt and horror 
and sordidness, this thing they were going to. 

War is not two great armies meeting in a clash and 
frenzy of battle. It is much more than that. War is 
a boy carried on a stretcher, looking up at God's blue 
sky with bewildered eyes that are soon to close; war 
is a woman carrying a child that has been wounded by 



FOR KING AND COUNTRY 



a shell ; war is spirited horses tied in burning buildings 
and waiting for death; war is the flower of a race, 
torn, battered, hungry, bleeding, up to its knees in icy 
water; war is an old woman burning a candle before 
the Mater Dolorosa for the son she has given. For 
King and Country ! 



CHAPTER I 
TAKING A CHANCE 



T STARTED for the Continent on a bright day 
■*■ early in January. I was searched by a woman 
from Scotland Yard before being allowed on the plat- 
form. The pockets of my fur coat were examined; 
my one piece of baggage, a suitcase, was inspected; my 
letters of introduction were opened and read. 

"Now, Mrs. Rinehart," she said, straightening, 
"just why are you going?" 

I told her exactly half of why I was going. I had 
a shrewd idea that the question in itself meant nothing. 
But it gave her a good chance to look at me. She was 
a very clever woman. 

And so, having been discovered to be carrying 
neither weapons nor seditious documents, and having 
an open and honest eye, I was allowed to go through 
the straight and narrow way that led to possible de- 
struction. Once or twice, later on, I blamed that 
woman for letting me through. I blamed myself for 
telling only half of my reasons for going. Had I 
told her all she would have detained me safely in 
England, where automobiles sometimes go less than 
eighty miles an hour, and where a sharp bang means 
a door slamming in the wind and not a shell exploding, 
where hostile aeroplanes overhead with bombs and un- 
pleasant little steel darts, were not always between 

9 



io KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

one's eyes and heaven. She let me through, and I 
went out on the platform. 

The leaving of the one-o'clock train from Victoria 
Station, London, is an event and a tragedy. Wounded 
who have recovered are going back: soldiers who 
have been having their week at home are returning to 
that mysterious region across the Channel, the front. 

Not the least of the British achievements had been to 
transport, during the deadlock of the first winter of the 
war, almost the entire army, in relays, back to England 
for a week's rest. It had been done without the loss of 
a man, across a channel swarming with hostile sub- 
marines. They came in thousands, covered with mud, 
weary, eager, their eyes searching the waiting crowd 
for some beloved face. And those who waited and 
watched as the cars emptied sometimes wept with joy, 
and sometimes turned and went away alone. 

Their week over, rested, tidy, eyes still eager but 
now turned toward France, the station platform be- 
side the one-o'clock train was filled with soldiers going 
back. There were few to see them off ; there were not 
many tears. Nothing is more typical of the courage 
and patriotism of the British women than that plat- 
form beside the one-o'clock train at Victoria. The 
crowd was shut out by ropes and Scotland Yard men 
stood guard. And out on the platform, saying little, 
because words are so feeble, pacing back and forth 
slowly, went these silent couples. They did not even 
touch hands. One felt that all the unselfish stoicism 
and restraint would crumble under the familiar touch. 

The platform filled. Sir Purtab Singh, an Indian 
prince, with his suite, was going back to the English 
lines. I had been a neighbour of his at Claridge's 
Hotel in London. I caught his eye. It was filled with 



TAKING A CHANCE n 

cold suspicion. It said quite plainly that I could put 
nothing over on him. But whether he suspected me of 
being a newspaper writer or a spy I do not know. 

Somehow, considering that the train was carrying 
a suspicious and turbaned Indian prince, any number 
of impatient officers and soldiers, and an American 
woman who was carefully avoiding the war office and 
trying to look like a buyer crossing the Channel for 
hats, the whistle for starting sounded rather inade- 
quate. It was not martial. It was thin, effeminate, ab- 
surd. And so we were off, moving slowly past that line 
on the platform, where no one smiled ; where grief and 
tragedy, in that one revealing moment, were written 
deep. I shall never forget the faces of the women as 
the train crept by. 

And now the train was well under way. The car 
was very quiet. The memory of those faces on the 
platform was too fresh. There was a brown and weary 
officer across from me. He sat very still, looking 
straight ahead. Long after the train had left Lon- 
don, and was moving smoothly through the English 
fields, so green even in winter, he still sat in the same 
attitude. 

I drew a long breath, and ordered luncheon. I was 
off to the war. I might be turned back at Folkstone. 
There was more than a chance that I might not get 
beyond Calais, which was under military law. But at 
least I had made a start. 

This is a narrative of personal experience. It makes 
no pretensions, except to truth. It is pure reporting, 
a series of pictures, many of them disconnected, but 
all authentic. It will take a hundred years to paint 
this war on one canvas. A thousand observers, ten 
thousand, must record what they have seen. To the 



12 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

reports of trained men must be added a bit here and 
there from these untrained observers, who without 
military knowledge, ignorant of the real meaning of 
much that they saw, have been able to grasp only a 
part of the human significance of the great tragedy 
of Europe. 

I was such an observer. 

My errand was primarily humane, to visit the 
hospitals at or near the front, and to be able 
to form an opinion of what supplies were needed, of 
conditions generally. Rumour in America had it that 
the medical and surgical situation was chaotic. Bands 
of earnest and well-intentioned people were working 
quite in the dark as to the conditions they hoped to 
relieve. And over the hospital situation, as over the 
military, brooded the impenetrable silence that has 
been decreed by the Allies since the beginning of the 
war. I had met everywhere in America tales from 
both the German and the Allies' lines that had as- 
tounded me. It seemed incredible that such conditions 
could exist in an age of surgical enlightenment; that, 
even in an unexpected and unprepared- for war, mod- 
ern organisation and efficiency should have utterly 
failed. 

On the steamer crossing the Atlantic, with the ship 
speeding on her swift and rather precarious journey, 
windows and ports carefully closed and darkened, one 
heard the same hideous stories : of tetanus in uncount- 
ed cases, of fearful infections, of no bandages — worst 
of all, of no anaesthetics. 

I was a member of the American Red Cross Asso- 
ciation, but I knew that the great work of the Ameri- 
can Red Cross was in sending supplies. The compara- 
tively few nurses they had sent to the western field of 



TAKING A CHANCE 13 

war were not at the front or near it. The British, 
French, Belgian and Dutch nursing associations were in 
charge of the field hospitals, so far as I could discover. 

To see these hospitals, to judge and report condi- 
tions, then, was a part of my errand. Only a part, of 
course; for I had another purpose. I knew nothing 
of strategy or tactics, of military movements and 
their significance. I was not interested in them par- 
ticularly. But I meant to get, if it was possible, a 
picture of this new warfare that would show it for 
the horror that it is; a picture that would give pause 
to that certain percentage of the American people that 
is always so eager to force a conservative government 
into conflict with other nations. 

There were other things to learn. What was France 
doing? The great sister republic had put a magnifi- 
cent army into the field. Between France and the 
United States were many bonds, much reciprocal good 
feeling. The Statue of Liberty, as I went down the 
bay, bespoke the kindly feeling between the two repub- 
lics. I remembered Lafayette. Battle-scarred France, 
where liberty has fought so hard for life — what was 
France doing? Not saying much, certainly. Fight- 
ing, surely, as the French have always fought. For 
certainly England, with her gallant but at that time 
meagre army, was not fighting alone the great war. 

But there were three nations fighting the allied 
cause in the west. What had become of the heroic 
Belgian Army ? Was it resting on its laurels ? Hav- 
ing done its part, was it holding an honorary position 
in the great line-up? Was it a fragment or an army, 
an entity or a memory ? 

The newspapers were full of details that meant 
nothing: names of strange villages, movements back- 



14 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

ward and forward as the long battle line bent and 
straightened again. But what was really happening 
beyond the barriers that guarded the front so jeal- 
ously? How did the men live under these new and 
strange conditions? What did they think? Or fear? 
Or hope? 

Great lorries and transports went out from the 
French coast towns and disappeared beyond the hori- 
zon; motor ambulances and hospital trains came in 
with the grim harvest. Men came and, like those who 
had gone before, they too went out and did not come 
back. "Somewhere in France," the papers said. Such 
letters as they wrote came from "somewhere in 
France.'' What was happening then, over there, be- 
yond the horizon, "somewhere in France"? 

And now that I have been beyond the dead line many 
of these questions have answered themselves. France 
is saying nothing, and fighting magnificently. Belgium, 
with two-thirds of her army gone, has still fifty thou- 
sand men, and is preparing two hundred thousand 
more. 

Instead of merely an honorary position, she is hold- 
ing tenaciously, against repeated onslaughts and under 
horrible conditions, the flooded district between Nieu- 
port and Dixmude. England, although holding only 
thirty-two miles of front, beginning immediately south 
of Ypres, is holding that line against some of the most 
furious fighting of the war, and is developing, at the 
same time, an enormous fighting machine for the 
spring movement.* 

The British soldier is well equipped, well fed, com- 

* This is written of conditions in the early spring of 1915. 
.Although the relative positions of the three armies are the same, 
:the British are holding a considerably longer frontage. 



TAKING A CHANCE 15 

fortably transported. When it is remembered that 
England is also assisting to equip all the allied armies, 
it will be seen that she is doing much more than hold- 
ing the high seas. 

To see the wounded, then ; to follow the lines of hos- 
pital trains to that mysterious region, the front; to 
see the men in the trenches and in their billets; to 
observe their morale, the conditions under which they 
lived — and died. It was too late to think of the cause 
of the war or of the justice or injustice of that cause. 
It will never be too late for its humanities and inhu- 
manities, its braveries and its occasional flinchings, its 
tragedies and its absurdities. 

It was through the assistance of the Belgian Red 
Cross that I got out of England and across the Chan- 
nel. I visited the Anglo-Belgian Committee at its 
quarters in the Savoy Hotel, London, and told them 
of my twofold errand. They saw at once the point I 
made. America was sending large amounts of money 
and vast quantities of supplies to the Belgians on both 
sides of the line. What was being done in interned 
Belgium was well known. But those hospital supplies 
and other things shipped to Northern France were 
swallowed up in the great silence. The war would not 
be ended in a day or a month. 

"Let me see conditions as they really are," I said. 
"It is no use telling me about them. Let me see them. 
Then I can tell the American people what they have 
already done in the war zone, and what they may be 
asked to do." 

Through a piece of good luck Doctor Depage, the 
president, had come across the Channel to a confer- 
ence, and was present. A huge man, in the uniform 
of a colonel of the Belgian Army, with a great mill- 



16 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

tary cape, he seemed to fill and dominate the little 
room. 

They conferred together in rapid French. 

"Where do you wish to go?" I was asked. 

"Everywhere." 

"Hospitals are not always cheerful to visit." 

"I am a graduate of a hospital training-school. 
Also a member of the American Red Cross." 

They conferred again. 

"Madame will not always be comfortable — over 
there." 

"I don't want to be comfortable," I said bravely. 

Another conference. The idea was a new one; it 
took some mental readjustment. But their cause was 
just, and mingled with their desire to let America 
know what they were doing was a justifiable pride. 
They knew what I was to find out — that one of the 
finest hospitals in the world, as to organisation, equip- 
ment and results, was situated almost under the guns 
of devastated Nieuport, so close that the roar of ar- 
tillery is always in one's ears. 

I had expected delays, a possible refusal. Every- 
one had encountered delays of one sort and another. 
Instead, I found a most courteous and agreeable 
permission given. I was rather dazed. And when, 
a day or so later, through other channels, I found 
myself in possession of letters to the Baron de Bro- 
queville, Premier and Minister of War for Belgium, 
and to General Melis, Inspector General of the Bel- 
gian Army Medical Corps, I realised that, once in 
Belgian territory, my troubles would probably be at 
an end. 

For getting out of England I put my faith in a card 
given me by the Belgian Red Cross. There are only 



TAKING A CHANCE 17 

four such cards in existence, and mine was number 
four. 

From Calais to La Panne ! If I could get to Calais 
I could get to the front, for La Panne is only four 
miles from Nieuport, where the confronting lines of 
trenches begin. But Calais was under military law. 
Would I be allowed to land ? 

Such writers as reached there were allowed twenty- 
four hours, and were then shipped back across the 
Channel or to some innocuous destination south. Yet 
this little card, if all went well, meant the privilege of 
going fifty miles northeast to the actual front. True, 
it gave no chance for deviation. A mile, a hundred 
feet off the straight and tree-lined road north to La 
Panne, and I should be arrested. But the time to think 
about that would come later on. 

As a matter of fact, I have never been arrested. 
Except in the hospitals, I was always practically where 
I had no business to be. I had a room in the Hotel 
des Arcades, in Dunkirk, for weeks, where, just round 
the corner, the police had closed a house for a month 
as a punishment because a room had been rented to a 
correspondent. The correspondent had been sentenced 
to five years' imprisonment, but had been released after 
five weeks. I was frankly a writer. I was almost ag- 
gressively a writer. 1 wrote down carefully and 
openly everything I saw. I made, but of course under 
proper auspices and with the necessary permits, excur- 
sions to the trenches from Nieuport to the La Bassee 
region and Bethune, along Belgian, French and Eng- 
lish lines, always openly, always with a notebook. And 
nothing happened ! 

As my notebook became filled with data I grew more 
and more anxious, while the authorities grew more 



18 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

calm. Suppose I fell into the hands of the Germans! 
It was a large notebook, filled with much information. 
I could never swallow the thing, as officers are sup- 
posed to swallow the password slips in case of capture. 
After a time the general spy alarm got into my blood. 
I regarded the boy who brought my morning coffee 
with suspicion, and slept with my notes under my pil- 
low. And nothing happened! 

I had secured my passport vise at the French and 
Belgian Consulates, and at the latter legation was able 
also to secure a letter asking the civil and military 
authorities to facilitate my journey. The letter had 
been requested for me by Colonel Depage. 

It was almost miraculously easy to get out of Eng- 
land. It was almost suspiciously easy. My passport 
frankly gave the object of my trip as ''literary work." 
Perhaps the keen eyes of the inspectors who passed me 
onto the little channel boat twinkled a bit as they ex- 
amined it. 

The general opinion as to the hopelessness of my 
trying to get nearer than thirty miles to the front had 
so communicated itself to me that had I been turned 
back there on the quay at Folkstone, I would have been 
angry, but hardly surprised. 

Not until the boat was out in the channel did I feel 
sure that I was to achieve even this first leg of the 
journey. 

Even then, all was not well. With Folkstone and 
the war office well behind, my mind turned to sub- 
marines as a sunflower to the sun. Afterward I found 
that the thing to do is not to think about submarines. 
To think of politics, or shampoos, or of people one 
does not like, but not of submarines. They are like 
ghosts in that respect. They are perfectly safe and 



TAKING A CHANCE 19 

entirely innocuous as long as one thinks of something 
else. 

And something went wrong almost immediately. 

It was imperative that I get to Calais. And the boat, 
which had intended making Calais, had had a report of 
submarines and headed for Boulogne. This in itself 
was upsetting. To have, as one may say, one's teeth 
set for Calais, and find one is biting on Boulogne, is not 
agreeable. I did not want Boulogne. My pass was 
from Calais. I had visions of waiting in Boulogne, of 
growing old and grey waiting, or of trying to walk 
to Calais and being turned back, of being locked in a 
cow stable and bedded down on straw. For fear of 
rousing hopes that must inevitably be disappointed, 
again nothing happened. 

There were no other women on board : only British 
officers and the turbaned and imposing Indians. The 
day was bright, exceedingly cold. The boat went at 
top speed, her lifeboats slung over the sides and ready 
for lowering. There were lookouts posted every- 
where. I did not think they attended to their business. 
Every now and then one lifted his head and looked at 
the sky or at the passengers. I felt that I should re- 
port him. What business had he to look away from 
the sea? I went out to the bow and watched for 
periscopes. There were black things floating about. I 
decided that they were not periscopes, but mines. We 
went very close to them. They proved to be buoys 
marking the Channel. 

I hated to take my eyes off the sea, even for a mo- 
ment. If you have ever been driven at sixty miles an 
hour over a bad road, and felt that if you looked away 
the car would go into the ditch, and if you will multi- 
ply that by the exact number of German submarines 



20 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

and then add the British Army, you will know how I 
felt. 

Afterward I grew accustomed to the Channel cross- 
ing. I made it four times. It was necessary for me 
to cross twice after the eighteenth of February, when 
the blockade began. On board the fated Arabic, later 
sunk by a German submarine, I ran the blockade again 
to return to America. It was never an enjoyable thing 
to brave submarine attack, but one develops a sort of 
philosophy. It is the same with being under fire. The 
first shell makes you jump. The second you speak of, 
commenting with elaborate carelessness on where it 
fell. This is a gain over shell number one, when you 
cannot speak to save your life. The third shell you 
ignore, and the fourth you forget about — if you can. 

Seeing me alone the captain asked me to the canvas 
shelter of the bridge. I proceeded to voice my protest 
at our change of destination. He apologised, but we 
continued to Boulogne. 

"What does a periscope look like?" I asked. "I 
mean, of course, from this boat?" 

"Depends on how much of it is showing. Some- 
times it's only about the size of one of those gulls. 
It's hard to tell the difference." 

I rather suspect that captain now. There were many 
gulls sitting on the water. I had been looking for 
something like a hitching post sticking up out of the 
water. Now my last vestige of pleasure and confi- 
dence was gone. I went almost mad trying to watch 
all the gulls at once. 

"What will you do if you see a submarine?' 

"Run it down," said the captain calmly. "That's 
the only chance we've got. That is, if we see the boat 
itself. These little Channel steamers make about 



TAKING A CHANCE 21 

twenty-six knots, and the submarine, submerged, only 
about half of that. Sixteen is the best they can do 
on the surface. Run them down and sink them, that's 
my motto." 

"What about a torpedo?" 

"We can see them coming. It will be hard to tor- 
pedo this boat — she goes too fast." 

Then and there he explained to me the snowy wake 
of the torpedo, a white path across the water; the 
mechanism by which it is kept true to its course; the 
detonator that explodes it. From nervousness I shift- 
ed to enthusiasm. I wanted to see the white wake. 
I wanted to see the Channel boat dodge it. My sport- 
ing blood was up. I was willing to take a chance. I 
felt that if there was a difficulty this man would escape 
it. I turned and looked back at the khaki-coloured 
figures on the deck below. 

Taking a chance! They were all taking a chance. 
And there was one, an officer, with an empty right 
sleeve. And suddenly what for an enthusiastic mo- 
ment, in that bracing sea air, had seemed a game, 
became the thing that it is, not a game, but a deadly 
and cruel war. I never grew accustomed to the tragedy 
of the empty sleeve. And as if to accentuate this 
thing toward which I was moving so swiftly, the 
British Red Cross ship, from Boulogne to Folkstone, 
came in sight, hurrying over with her wounded, a 
great white boat, garnering daily her harvest of 
wounded and taking them "home." 

Land now — a grey-white line that is the sand dunes 
at Ambleteuse, north of Boulogne. I knew Amble- 
teuse. It gave a sense of strangeness to see the old 
tower at the water's edge loom up out of the sea. The 
sight of land was comforting, but vigilance was not 



22 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

relaxed. The attacks of submarines have been mostly 
made not far outside the harbours, and only a few 
days later that very boat was to make a sensational 
escape just outside the harbour of Boulogne. 

All at once it was twilight, the swift dusk of the 
sea. The boat warped in slowly. I showed my pass- 
port, and at last I was on French soil. North and 
east, beyond the horizon, lay the thing I had come to 
see. 



CHAPTER II 
"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" 



"|\yf ANY people have seen Boulogne and have writ- 
*T-i- ten of what they have seen: the great hotels 
that are now English hospitals; the crowding of 
transport wagons; the French signs, which now have 
English signs added to them ; the mixture of uniforms 
— English khaki and French blue; the white steamer 
waiting at the quay, with great Red Crosses on her 
snowy funnels. Over everything, that first winter of 
the war, hung the damp chill of the Continental winter, 
that chill that sinks in and never leaves, that penetrates 
fur and wool and eats into the spirit like an acid. 

I got through the customs without much difficulty. 
I had a large package of cigarettes for the soldiers, for 
given his choice, food or a smoke, the soldier will 
choose the latter. At last after much talk I got them 
in free of duty. And then I was foot free. 

Here again I realise that I should have encountered 
great difficulties. I should at least have had to walk 
to Calais, or to have slept, as did one titled English- 
woman I know, in a bathtub. I did neither. I took 
a first-class ticket to Calais, and waited round the 
station until a train should go. 

And then I happened on one of the pictures that 
will stand out always in my mind. Perhaps it was 
because I was not yet inured to suffering; certainly I 

23 



24 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

was to see many similar scenes, much more of the 
flotsam and jetsam of the human tide that was sweep- 
ing back and forward over the flat fields of France and 
Flanders. 

A hospital train had come in, a British train. The 
twilight had deepened into night. Under the flickering 
arc lamps, in that cold and dismal place, the train 
came to a quiet stop. Almost immediately it began to 
unload. A door opened and a British nurse alighted. 
Then slowly and painfully a man in a sitting position 
slid forward, pushing himself with his hands, his two 
bandaged feet held in the air. He sat at the edge of 
the doorway and lowered his feet carefully until they 
hung free. 

"Frozen feet from the trenches," said a man stand- 
ing beside me. 

The first man was lifted down and placed on a 
truck, and his place was filled immediately by another. 
As fast as one man was taken another came. The 
line seemed endless. One and all, their faces ex- 
pressed keen apprehension, lest some chance awkward- 
ness should touch or jar the tortured feet. Ten at a 
time they were wheeled away. And still they came 
and came, until perhaps two hundred had been taken 
off. But now something else was happening. Another 
car of badly wounded was being unloaded. Through 
the windows could be seen the iron framework on 
which the stretchers, three in a tier, were swung. 

Halfway down the car a wide window was opened, 
and two tall lieutenants, with four orderlies, took their 
places outside. It was very silent. Orders were given 
in low tones. The muffled rumble of the trucks carry- 
ing the soldiers with frozen feet was all that broke the 
quiet, and soon they, too, were gone; and there re- 



"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" 25 

mained only the six men outside, receiving with hands 
as gentle as those of women the stretchers so cau- 
tiously worked over the window sill to them. One 
by one the stretchers came; one by one they were 
added to the lengthening line that lay prone on the 
stone flooring beside the train. There was not a jar, 
not an unnecessary motion. One great officer, very 
young, took the weight of the end as it came toward 
him, and lowered it with marvellous gentleness as the 
others took hold. He had a trick of the wrist that 
enabled him to reach up, take hold and lower the 
stretcher, without freeing his hands. He was mar- 
vellously strong, marvellously tender. 

The stretchers were laid out side by side. Their 
occupants did not speak or move. It was as if they 
had reached their limit of endurance. They lay with 
closed eyes, or with impassive, upturned faces, swathed 
in their brown blankets against the chill. Here and 
there a knitted neck scarf had been loosely wrapped 
about a head. All over America women were knitting 
just such scarfs. 

And still the line grew. The car seemed inex- 
haustible of horrors. And still the young lieutenant 
with the tender hands and the strong wrists took the 
onus of the burden, the muscles of his back swelling 
under his khaki tunic. If I were asked to typify the 
attitude of the British Army and of the British people 
toward their wounded, I should point to that boy. 
Nothing that I know of in history can equal the care 
the English are taking of their wounded in this, the 
great war. They have, of course, the advantage of 
the best nursing system in Europe. 

France is doing her best, but her nursing had always 
been in the hands of nuns, and there are not nearly 



26 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

enough nuns in France to-day to cope with the situa- 
tion. Belgium, with some of the greatest sur- 
geons in the world, had no organised nursing sys- 
tem when war broke out. She is largely dependent 
apparently on the notable work of her priests, and on 
English and Dutch nurses. 

When my train drew out, the khaki-clad lieutenant 
and his assistants were still at work. One car was 
emptied. They moved on to a second. Other willing 
hands were at work on the line that stretched along 
the stone flooring, carrying the Wounded to ambu- 
lances, but the line seemed hardly to shrink. Always 
the workers inside the train brought another stretcher 
and yet another. The rumble of the trucks had ceased. 
It was very cold. I could not look any longer. 

It took three hours to go the twenty miles to Calais, 
from six o'clock to nine. I wrapped myself in my fur 
coat. Two men in my compartment slept comfort- 
ably. One clutched a lighted cigarette. It burned 
down close to his fingers. It was fascinating to watch. 
But just when it should have provided a little excite- 
ment he wakened. It was disappointing. 

We drifted into conversation, the gentleman of the 
cigarette and I. He was an Englishman from a Lon- 
don newspaper. He was counting on his luck to get 
him into Calais and his wit to get him out. He told 
me his name. Just before I left France I heard of a 
highly philanthropic and talented gentleman of the 
same name who was unselfishly going through the 
hospitals as near the front as he could, giving a mov- 
ing-picture entertainment to the convalescent soldiers. 
I wish him luck ; he deserves it. And I am sure he is 
giving a good entertainment. His wit had got him ; 
out of Calais ! 



"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" 27 

Calais at last, and the prospect of food. Still 
greater comfort, here my little card became operative. 
I was no longer a refugee, fleeing and hiding from the 
stern eyes of Lord Kitchener and the British War 
Office. I had come into my own, even to supper. 

I saw no English troops that night. The Calais 
station was filled with French soldiers. The first 
impression, after the trim English uniform, was not 
particularly good. They looked cold, dirty, unutter- 
ably weary. Later, along the French front, I revised 
my early judgment. But I have never reconciled my- 
self to the French uniform, with its rather slovenly 
cut, or to the tendency of the French private soldier 
to allow his beard to grow. It seems a pity that both 
French and Belgians, magnificent fighters that they 
are, are permitted this slackness in appearance. There 
are no smarter officers anywhere than the French and 
Belgian officers, but the appearance of their troops 
en masse is not imposing. 

Later on, also, a close inspection of the old French 
uniform revealed it as made of lighter cloth than the 
English, less durable, assuredly less warm. The new 
grey-blue uniform is much heavier, but its colour is 
questionable. It should be almost invisible in the 
early morning mists, but against the green of spring 
and summer, or under the magnesium flares — called 
by the English "starlights" — with which the Germans 
illuminate the trenches of the Allies during the night, 
it appeared to me that it would be most conspicuous. 

I have before me on my writing table a German 
fatigue cap. Under the glare of my electric lamp it 
fades, loses colour and silhouette, is eclipsed. I have 
tried it in sunlight against grass. It does the same 
thing. A piece of the same efficient management that 



28 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

has distributed white smocks and helmet covers among 
the German troops fighting in the rigours of Poland, to 
render them invisible against the snow ! 

Calais then, with food to get and an address to find. 
For Doctor Depage had kindly arranged a haven for 
me. Food, of a sort, I got at last. The hotel dining 
room was full of officers. Near me sat fourteen mem- 
bers of the aviation corps, whose black leather coats 
bore, either on left breast or left sleeve, the outspread 
wings of the flying division. There were fifty people, 
perhaps, and two waiters, one a pale and weary boy. 
The food was bad, but the crisp French bread was 
delicious. Perhaps nowhere in the world is the bread 
average higher than in France — just as in America, 
where fancy breads are at their best, the ordinary 
wheat loaf is, taking the average, exceedingly poor. 

Calais was entirely dark. The Zeppelin attack, 
which took place four or five weeks later, was antici- 
pated, and on the night of my arrival there was a 
general feeling that the birthday of the German 
Emperor the next day would produce something spec- 
tacular in the way of an air raid. That explained, 
possibly, the presence so far from the front — fifty 
miles from the nearest point — of so many flying men. 

As my French conversational powers are limited, I 
had some difficulty in securing a vehicle. This was 
explained later by the discovery the next day that no 
one is allowed on the streets of Calais after ten o'clock. 
Nevertheless I secured a hack, and rode blithely and 
unconsciously to the house where I was to spend the 
night. I have lost the address of that house. I wish 
I could remember it, for I left there a perfectly good 
and moderately expensive pair of field glasses. I 
have been in Calais since, and have had the wild idea 



"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" 29 

of driving about the streets until I find it and my 
glasses. But a close scrutiny of the map of Calais has 
deterred me. Age would overtake me, and I should 
still be threading the maze of those streets, seeking 
an old house in an old garden, both growing older all 
the time. 

A very large house it was, large and cold. I found 
that I was expected ; but an air of unreality hung over 
everything. I met three or four most kindly Belgian 
people of whom I knew nothing and who knew noth- 
ing of me. I did not know exactly why I was there, 
and I am sure the others knew less. I went up to 
my room in a state of bewilderment. It was a huge 
room without a carpet, and the tiny fire refused to 
light. There was a funeral wreath over the bed, with 
the picture of the deceased woman in the centre. It 
was bitterly cold, and there was a curious odor of 
disinfectants in the air. 

By a window was a narrow black iron bed without 
a mattress. It looked sinister. Where was the mat- 
tress? Had its last occupant died and the mattress 
been burned? I sniffed about it; the odour of disin- 
fectant unmistakably clung to it. I do not yet know 
the story of that room or of that bed. Perhaps there 
is no story. But I think there is. I put on my fur 
coat and went to bed, and the lady of the wreath came 
in the night and talked French to me. 

I rose in the morning at seven degrees Centigrade 
and dressed. At breakfast part of the mystery was 
cleared up. The house was being used as a residence 
by the chief surgeon of the Ambulance Jeanne d'Arc, 
the Belgian Red Cross hospital in Calais, and by others 
interested in the Red Cross work. It was a dormitory 
also for the English nurses from the ambulance. This 



30 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

explained, naturally, my being sent there, the some- 
what casual nature of the furnishing and the odour of 
disinfectants. It does not, however, explain the lady 
of the wreath or the black iron bed. 

After breakfast some of the nurses came in from 
night duty at the ambulance. I saw their bedroom, 
one directly underneath mine, with four single beds 
and no pretence at comfort. It was cold, icy cold. 

"You are very courageous," I said. "Surely this is 
not very comfortable. I should think you might at 
least have a fire." 

"We never think of a fire," a nurse said simply. 
"The best we can do seems so little to what the men 
are doing, doesn't it?" 

She was not young. Some one told me she had a 
son, a boy of nineteen, in the trenches. She did not 
speak of him. But I have wondered since what she 
must feel during those grisly hours of the night when 
the ambulances are giving up their wounded at the 
hospital doors. No doubt she is a tender nurse, for in 
every case she is nursing vicariously that nineteen- 
year-old boy of hers in the trenches. 

That morning I visited the various Calais hospitals. 
It was a bright morning, sunny and cold. Lines of 
refugees with packs and bundles were on their way 
to the quay. 

The frightful congestion of the autumn of 1914 was 
over, but the hospitals were all full. They were sur- 
gical hospitals, typhoid hospitals, hospitals for injured 
civilians, hospital boats. One and all they were pre- 
paring as best they could for the mighty conflict of the 
spring, when each side expected to make its great on- 
ward movement. 

As it turned out, the terrible fighting of the spring 



"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE" 31 

failed to break the deadlock, but the preparations made 
by the hospitals were none too great for the sad by- 
products of war. 

The Belgian hospital question was particularly 
grave. To-day, several months later, it is still a matter 
for anxious thought. In case the Germans retire from 
Belgium the Belgians will find themselves in their own 
land, it is true, but a land stripped of everything. It 
is for this contingency that the Allies are preparing. 
In whichever direction the line moves, the arrange- 
ments that have served during the impasse of the past 
year will no longer answer. Portable field hospital 
pavilions, with portable equipment, will be required. 
The destructive artillery fire, with its great range, will 
leave no buildings intact near the battle line. 

One has only to follow the present line, fringed as 
it is with destroyed or partially destroyed towns, to 
realise what the situation will be if a successful of- 
fensive movement on the part of the Allies drives the 
battle line back. Artillery fire leaves no buildings 
standing. Even the roads become impassable, — masses 
of broken stone with gaping holes, over which ambu- 
lances travel with difficulty. 



CHAPTER III 

LA PANNE 



FROM Calais to La Panne is fifty miles. Calais 
is under military law. It is difficult to enter, 
almost impossible to leave in the direction in which I 
wished to go. But here again the Belgian Red Cross 
achieved the impossible. I was taken before the 
authorities, sharply questioned, and in the end a pink 
slip was passed over to the official of the Red Cross 
who was to take me to the front. I wish I could have 
secured that pink slip, if only because of its apparent 
fragility and its astounding wearing qualities. All 
told, between Calais and La Panne it was inspected — 
texture, weight and reading matter, front and reverse 
sides, upside down and under glass — by some several 
hundred sentries, officials and petty highwaymen. It 
suffered everything but attack by bayonet. I found 
myself repeating that way to madness of Mark 
Twain's : 

Punch, brothers, punch with care, 
Punch in the presence of the passenjaire, 
A pink trip slip for a iive-cent fare — 

and so on. 

Northeast then, in an open grey car with "Belgian 
Red Cross" on each side of the machine. Northeast 
in a bitter wind, into a desolate and almost empty 

32 



LA PANNE 33 



country of flat fields, canals and roads bordered by 
endless rows of trees bent forward like marching men. 
Northeast through Gravelines, once celebrated of the 
Armada and now a manufacturing city. It is curious 
to think that a part of the Armada went ashore at 
Gravelines, and that, by the shifting of the English 
Channel, it is now two miles inland and connected 
with the sea by a ship canal. Northeast still, to Dun- 
kirk. 

From Calais to Gravelines there had been few signs 
of war — an occasional grey lorry laden with supplies 
for the front; great ambulances, also grey, and with 
a red cross on the top as a warning to aeroplanes ; now 
and then an armoured car. At Gravelines the country 
took on a more forbidding appearance. Trenches 
flanked the roads, which were partly closed here and 
there by overlapping earthworks, so that the car must 
turn sharply to the left and then to the right to get 
through. At night the passage is closed by barbed 
wire. In one place a bridge was closed by a steel 
rope, which a sentry lowered after another operation 
on the pink slip. 

The landscape grew more desolate as the daylight 
began to fade, more desolate and more warlike. There 
were platforms for lookouts here and there in the 
trees, prepared during the early days of the war be- 
fore the German advance was checked. And there 
were barbed-wire entanglements in the fields. I had 
always thought of a barbed-wire entanglement as 
probably breast high. It was surprising to see them 
only from eighteen inches to two feet in height. It 
was odd, too, to think that most of the barbed wire 
had been made in America. Barbed wire is playing 
a tremendous part in this war. The English say that 



34 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

the Boers originated this use for it in the South 
African War. Certainly much tragedy and an occa- 
sional bit of grim humour attach to its present use. 

With the fortified town of Dunkirk — or Dunkerque 
— came the real congestion of war. The large square 
of the town was filled with soldiers and marines. Here 
again were British uniforms, British transports and 
ambulances. As a seaport for the Allied Armies in 
the north, it was bustling with activity. The French 
and Belgians predominated, with a sprinkling of 
Spahis on horseback and Turcos. An air of activity, 
of rapid coming and going, filled the town. Despatch 
riders on motor cycles, in black leather uniforms with 
black leather hoods, flung through the square at reck- 
less speed. Battered automobiles, their glass shattered 
by*shells, mud guards crumpled, coated with clay and 
riddled with holes, were everywhere, coming and go- 
ing at the furious pace I have since learned to associate 
with war. 

And over all, presiding in heroic size in the centre 
of the Square, the statue of Jean Bart, Dunkirk's 
privateer and pirate, now come into his own again, was 
watching with interest the warlike activities of the 
Square. Things have changed since the days of Jean 
Bart, however. The cutlass that hangs by his side 
would avail him little now. The aeroplane bombs that 
drop round him now and then, and the processions of 
French "seventy-five" guns that rumble through the 
Square, must puzzle him. He must feel rather a 
piker in this business of modern war. 

Dunkirk is generally referred to as the "front." It 
is not, however. It is near enough for constant visits 
from German aeroplanes, and has been partially de- 



LA PANNE 35 



stroyed by German guns, firing from a distance of 
more than twenty miles. But the real line begins 
fifteen miles farther along the coast at Nieuport. 

So we left Dunkirk at once and continued toward 
La Panne. A drawbridge in the wall guards the road 
out of the city in that direction. And here for the 
first time the pink slip threatened to fail us. The Red' 
Cross had been used by spies sufficiently often to cover 
us with cold suspicion. And it was worse than that. 
Women were not allowed, under any circumstances, 
to go in that direction — a new rule, being enforced 
with severity. My little card was produced and eyed 
with hostility. 

My name was assuredly of German origin. I got 
out my passport and pointed to the picture on it. It 
had been taken hastily in Washington for passport 
purposes, and there was a cast in the left eye. I have 
no cast in the left eye. Timid attempts to squint 
with that eye failed. 

But at last the officer shrugged his shoulders and 
let us go. The two sentries who had kept their rifles 
pointed at me lowered them to a more comfortable 
angle. A temporary sense of cold down my back 
retired again to my feet, whence it had risen. We 
went over the ancient drawbridge, with its chains by 
which it may be raised, and were free. But our depar- 
ture was without enthusiasm. I looked back. Some 
eight sentries and officers were staring after us and 
muttering among themselves. 

Afterward I crossed that bridge many times. They 
grew accustomed to me, but they evidently thought me 
quite mad. Always they protested and complained, 
until one day the word went round that the American 



36 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

lady had been received -by the King. After that I was 
covered with the mantle of royalty. The sentries sa- 
luted as I passed. I was of the elect. 

There were other sentries until the Belgian frontier 
was passed. After that there was no further chal- 
lenging. The occasional distant roar of a great gun 
could be heard, and two French aeroplanes, winging 
home after a reconnaissance over the German lines, 
hummed overhead. Where between Calais and Dun- 
kirk there had been an occasional peasant's cart in the 
road or labourer in the fields, now the country was 
deserted, save for long lines of weary soldiers going to 
their billets, lines that shuffled rather than marched. 
There was no drum to keep them in step with its 
melancholy throbbing. Two by two, heads down, 
laden with intrenching tools in addition to their regu- 
lar equipment, grumbling as the car forced them off 
the road into the mud that bordered it, swathed beyond 
recognition against the cold and dampness, in the twi- 
light those lines of shambling men looked grim, de- 
termined, sinister. 

"We are going through Furnes," said my com- 
panion. "It has been shelled all day, but at dusk they 
usually stop. It is out of our way, but you will like 
to see it." 

I said I was perfectly willing, but that I hoped the 
Germans would adhere to their usual custom. I felt 
all at once that, properly conserved, a long and happy 
lift might lie before me. I mentioned that I was a 
person of no importance, and that my death would 
be of no military advantage. And, as if to emphasise 
my peaceful fireside at home, and dinner at seven 
o'clock with candles on the table, the fire re-com- 
menced. 



LA PANNE 37 



"Artillery," I said with conviction, "seems to me 
barbarous and unnecessary. But in a moving auto- 
mobile " 

It was a wrong move. He hastened to tell me of 
people riding along calmly in automobiles, and of the 
next moment there being nothing but a hole in the 
road. Also he told me how shrapnel spread, scatter- 
ing death over large areas. If I had had an idea of 
dodging anything I saw coming it vanished. 

We went into the little town of Furnes. Nothing 
happened. Only one shell was fired, and I have no 
idea where it fell. The town was a dead town, its 
empty streets full of brick and glass. I grew quite 
calm and expressed some anxiety about the tires. Al- 
though my throat was dry, I was able to enunciate 
clearly! We dared not light the car lamps, and our 
progress was naturally slow. 

Furnes is not on the coast, but three miles inland. 
So we turned sharp to the left toward La Panne, our 
destination, a small seaside resort in times of peace, 
but now the capital of Belgium. It was dark now, 
and the roads were congested with the movements of 
troops, some going to the trenches, those out of the 
trenches going back to their billets for twenty-four 
hours' rest, and the men who had been on rest moving 
up as pickets or reserves. Even in the darkness it 
was easy to tell the rested men from the ones newly 
relieved. Here were mostly Belgians, and the little 
Belgian soldier is a cheery soul. He asks very little, 
is never surly. A little food, a little sleep — on straw, 
in a stable or a church — and he is happy again. Over 
and over, as I saw the Belgian Army, I was impressed 
with its cheerfulness under unparalleled conditions. 

Most of them have been fighting since Liege. Of 



38 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

a hundred and fifty thousand men only fifty thousand 
remain. Their ration is meagre compared with the 
English and the French, their clothing worn and 
ragged. They are holding the inundated district be- 
tween Nieuport and Dixmude, a region of constant 
struggle for water-soaked trenches, where outposts at 
the time I was there were being fought for through 
lakes of icy water filled with barbed wire, where their 
wounded fall and drown. And yet they are inveter- 
ately cheerful. A brave lot, the Belgian soldiers, brave 
and uncomplaining ! It is no wonder that the King of 
Belgium loves them, and that his eyes are tragic as he 
looks at them. 

La Panne at last, a straggling little town of one 
street and rows of villas overlooking the sea. La 
Panne, with the guns of Nieuport constantly in one's 
ears, and the low, red flash of them along the sandy 
beach; with ambulances bringing in their wounded 
now that night covers their movements; with English 
gunboats close to the shore and a searchlight playing 
over the sea. La Panne, with just over the sand 
dunes the beginning of that long line of trenches that 
extends south and east and south again, four hun- 
dred and fifty miles of death. 

It was two weeks and four days since I had left 
America, and less than thirty hours since I boarded 
the one-o'clock train at Victoria Station, London. 
Later on I beat the thirty-hour record twice, once go- 
ing from the Belgian front to England in six hours, 
and another time leaving the English lines at Bethune, 
motoring to Calais, and arriving in my London hotel 
the same night. Cars go rapidly over the French roads, 
and the distance, measured by miles, is not great. 
Measured by difficulties, it is a different story. 



CHAPTER IV 
" 'TWAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 



From My Journal : 

La Panne, January 25th, 10 p.m. 

I AM at the Belgian Red Cross hospital to-night. 
Have had supper and have been given a room on 
the top floor, facing out over the sea. 

This is the base hospital for the Belgian lines. The 
men come here with the most frightful injuries. As 
I entered the building to-night the long tiled corridor 
was filled with the patient and quiet figures that are 
the first fruits of war. They lay on portable cots, 
waiting their turn in the operating rooms, the white 
coverings and bandages not whiter than their faces. 

1 1 p.m. The Night Superintendent has just been in 
to see me. She says there is a baby here from Furnes 
with both legs off, and a nun who lost an arm as she 
was praying in the garden of her convent. The baby 
will live, but the nun is dying. 

She brought me a hot-water bottle, for I am still 
chilled from my long ride, and sat down for a 
moment's talk. She is English, as are most of the 
nurses. She told me with tears in her eyes of a Dutch 
Red Cross nurse who was struck by a shell in Furnes, 
two days ago, as she crossed the street to her hospital, 
which was being evacuated. She was brought here. 

"Her leg was shattered," she said. "So young and 



39 



40 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

so pretty she was, too! One of the surgeons was in 
love with her. It seemed as if he could not let her 
die." 

How terrible! For she died. 

"But she had a casket," the Night Superintendent 
hastened to assure me. "The others, of course, do 
not. And two of the nurses were relieved to-day to 
go with her to the grave." 

1 wonder if the young surgeon went. I wonder 

The baby is near me. I can hear it whimpering. 
Midnight. A man in the next room has started to 

moan. Good God, what a place! He has shell in 
both lungs, and because of weakness had to be oper- 
ated on without an anaesthetic. 

2 a.m. I cannot sleep. He is trying to sing "Tip- 
perary." 

English battleships are bombarding the German bat- 
teries at Nieuport from the sea. The windows rattle 
all the time. 

6 a.m. A new day now. A grey and forbidding 
dawn. Sentries every hundred yards along the beach 
under my window. The gunboats are moving out to 
sea. A number of French aeroplanes are scouting 
overhead. 

The man in the next room is quiet. 

Imagine one of our great seaside hotels stripped of 
its bands, its gay crowds, its laughter. Paint its many 
windows white, with a red cross in the centre of each 
one. Imagine its corridors filled with wounded men, 
its courtyard crowded with ambulances, its parlours 
occupied by convalescents who are blind or hopelessly 
maimed, its card room a chapel trimmed with the 
panoply of death. For bathchairs and bathers on the 



" 'TWAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 41 

sands substitute long lines of weary soldiers drilling 
in the rain and cold. And over all imagine the unceas- 
ing roar of great guns. Then, but feebly, you will 
have visualised the Ambulance Ocean at La Panne as 
I saw it that first winter of the war. 

The town is built on the sand dunes, and is not 
unlike Ostend in general situation; but it is hardly 
more than a village. Such trees as there are grow out 
of the sand, and are twisted by the winds from the sea. 
Their trunks are green with smooth moss. And over 
the dunes is long grass, then grey and dry with win- 
ter, grass that was beaten under the wind into waves 
that surge and hiss. 

The beach is wide and level. There is no surf. The 
sea comes in in long, flat lines of white that wash 
unheralded about the feet of the cavalry horses drill- 
ing there. Here and there a fisherman's boat close 
to the line of villas marks the limit of high tide; 
marks more than that; marks the fisherman who has 
become a soldier ; marks the end of the peaceful occu- 
pations of the little town; marks the change from a 
sea that was a livelihood to a sea that has become a 
menace and a hidden death. 

The beach at La Panne has its story. There are 
guns there now, waiting. The men in charge of them 
wait, and, waiting, shiver in the cold. And just a few 
minutes away along the sands there was a house built 
by a German, a house whose foundation was a ce- 
mented site for a gun. The house is destroyed now. 
It had been carefully located, strategically, and built 
long before the war began. A gun on that foundation 
would have commanded Nieuport. 

Here, in six villas facing the sea, live King Albert 
and Queen Elisabeth and their household, and here the 



42 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

Queen, grief-stricken at the tragedy that has over- 
taken her innocent and injured people, visits the hospi- 
tal daily. 

La Panne has not been bombarded. Hostile aero- 
planes are always overhead. The Germans undoubt- 
edly know all about the town; but it has not been 
touched. I do not believe that it will be. For one 
thing, it is not at present strategically valuable. Much 
more important, Queen Elisabeth is a Bavarian prin- 
cess by birth. Quite aside from both reasons, the out- 
cry from the civilised world which would result from 
injury to any member of the Belgian royal house, with 
the present world-wide sympathy for Belgium, would 
make such an attack inadvisable. 

And yet who knows ? So much that was considered 
fundamental in the ethics of modern warfare has gone 
by the board ; so certainly is this war becoming one of 
reprisals, of hate and venom, that before this is pub- 
lished La Panne may have been destroyed, or its evacu- 
ation by the royal family have been decided. 

The contrast between Brussels and La Panne is the 
contrast between Belgium as it was and as it is. The 
last time I was in Belgium, before this war, I was in 
Brussels, The great modern city of three-quarters of 
a million people had grown up round the ancient 
capital of Brabant. Its name, which means "the dwell- 
ing on the marsh," dates from the tenth century. The 
huge Palais de Justice is one of the most remarkable 
buildings in the world. 

Now in front of that great building German guns 
are mounted, and the capital of Belgium is a fishing 
village on the sand dunes. The King of Belgium has 
exchanged the magnificent Palais du Roi for a small 
and cheaply built house — not that the democratic 



" 'TWAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 43 

young King of Belgium cares for palaces. But the 
contrast of the two pictures was impressed on me that 
winter morning as I stood on the sands at La Panne 
and looked at the royal villa. All round were sentries. 
The wind from the sea was biting. It set the long 
grey grass to waving, and blew the fine sand in clouds 
about the feet of the cavalry horses filing along the 
beach. 

I was quite unmolested as I took photographs of the 
stirring scenes about. It was the first daylight view I 
had had of the Belgian soldiers. These were men on 
their twenty-four hours' rest, with a part of the new 
army that was being drilled for the spring campaign. 
The Belgian system keeps a man twenty-four hours 
in the trenches, gives him twenty-four hours for 
rest well back from the firing line, and then, mov- 
ing him up to picket or reserve duty, holds him another 
twenty-four hours just behind the trenches. The 
English system is different. Along the English front 
men are four days in the trenches and four days out. 
All movements, of course, are made at night. 

The men I watched that morning were partly on 
rest, partly in reserve. They were shabby, cold and 
cheery. I created unlimited surprise and interest. 
They lined up eagerly to be photographed. One group 
I took was gathered round a sack of potatoes, paring 
raw potatoes and eating them. For the Belgian sol- 
dier is the least well fed of the three armies in the 
western field. When I left, a good Samaritan had 
sent a case or two of canned things to some of the 
regiments, and a favoured few were being initiated 
into the joys of American canned baked beans. They 
were a new sensation. To watch the soldiers eat them 
was a joy and a delight. 



44 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

I wish some American gentleman, tiring of storing 
up his treasures only in heaven, would send a can or 
a case or a shipload of baked beans to the Belgians. 
This is alliterative, but earnest. They can heat them 
in the trenches in the cans; they can thrive on them 
and fight on them. And when the cans are empty 
they can build fires in them or hang them, filled with 
stones, on the barbed-wire entanglements in front of 
the trenches, so that they ring like bells on a herd of 
cows to warn them of an impending attack. 

And while we are on this subject, I wish some of 
the women who are knitting scarfs would stop,* now 
that winter is over, and make jelly and jam for the 
brave and cheerful little Belgian army. I am aware 
that it is less pleasant than knitting. It cannot be 
taken to lectures or musicales. One cannot make jam 
between the courses of a luncheon or a dinner party, 
or during the dummy hand at bridge. But the men 
have so little — unsweetened coffee and black bread for 
breakfast ; a stew of meat and vegetables at mid-day, 
taken to them, when it can be taken, but carried miles 
from where it is cooked, and usually cold. They 
pour off the cold liquor and eat the unpalatable residue. 
Supper is like breakfast with the addition of a ration 
of minced meat and potatoes, also cold and not at- 
tractive at the best. 

Sometimes they have bully beef. I have eaten bully 
beef, which is a cooked and tinned beef, semi-gelat- 
inous. The Belgian bully beef is drier and tougher 

*This was written in the spring. By the time this book is 
published knitted woollens will be again in demand. Socks and 
mittens, abdominal belts and neck scarfs are much liked. A 
soldier told me he liked his scarf wide, and eight feet long, 
so he can carry it around his body and fasten it in the back. 



" 'TWAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 45 

than the English. It is not bad; indeed, it is quite 
good. But the soldier needs variety. The English 
know this. Their soldiers have sugar, tea, jam and 
cheese. 

If I were asked to-day what the Belgian army needs, 
now that winter is over and they need no longer shiver 
in their thin clothing, I should say, in addition to the 
surgical supplies that are so terribly necessary, port- 
able kitchens, to give them hot and palatable food. 
Such kitchens may be bought for two hundred and 
fifty dollars, with a horse to draw them. They are 
really sublimated steam cookers, with the hot water 
used to make coffee when they reach the trenches. 
I should say, then, surgical supplies and hospital equip- 
ment, field kitchens, jams of all sorts, canned beans, 
cigarettes and rubber boots ! A number of field kitch- 
ens have already been sent over. A splendid English- 
man attached to the Belgian Army has secured funds 
for a few more. But many are needed. I have seen a 
big and brawny Belgian officer, with a long record of 
military bravery behind him, almost shed tears over 
the prospect of one of these kitchens for his men. 

I took many pictures that morning — of dogs, three 
abreast, hauling mitrailleuse, the small and deadly 
quick-firing guns, from the word mitraille, a hail of 
balls; of long lines of Belgian lancers on their un- 
dipped and shaggy horses, each man carrying an 
eight-foot lance at rest; of men drilling in broken 
boots, in wooden shoes stuffed with straw, in carpet 
slippers. I was in furs from head to foot — the same 
fur coat that has been, in turn, lap robe, bed clothing 
and pillow — and I was cold. These men, smiling into 
my camera, were thinly dressed, with bare, ungloved 
hands. But they were smiling. 



46 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

Afterward I learned that many of them had no 
underclothing, that the blue tunics and trousers were 
all they had. Always they shivered, but often also 
they smiled. Many of them had fought since Liege; 
most of them had no knowledge of their families on 
the other side of the line of death. When they return 
to their country, what will they go back to? Their 
homes are gone, their farm buildings destroyed, their 
horses and cattle killed. 

But they are a courageous people, a bravely cheery 
people. For every one of them that remained there, 
two had gone, either to death, captivity or serious in- 
jury. They were glad to be alive that morning on the 
sands of La Panne, under the incessant roaring of the 
guns. The wind died down ; the sun came out. It was 
January. In two months, or three, it would be spring 
and warm. In two months, or three, they confidently 
expected to be on the move toward their homes again. 

What mattered broken boots and the mud and filth 
of their trenches? What mattered the German aero- 
plane overhead? Or cold and insufficient food? Or 
the wind ? Nothing mattered but death, and they still 
lived. And perhaps, beyond the line 

That afternoon, from the Ambulance Ocean, a 
young Belgian officer was buried. 

It was a bright, sunny afternoon, but bitterly cold. 
Troops were lined up before the hospital in the square ; 
a band, too, holding its instruments with blue and un- 
gloved fingers. 

He had been a very brave officer, and very young. 
The story of what he had done had been told about. 
So, although military funerals are many, a handful 
of civilians had gathered to see him taken away to the 
crowded cemetery. The three English gunboats were 



" 'TWAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 47 

patrolling the sea. Tall Belgian generals, in high 
blue-and-gold caps and great cape overcoats, met in 
the open space and conferred. 

The dead young officer lay in state in the little 
chapel of the hospital. Ten tall black standards round 
him held burning candles, the lights of faith. His uni- 
form, brushed of its mud and neatly folded, lay on top 
of the casket, with his pathetic cap and with the sword 
that would never lead another charge. He had fought 
very hard to live, they said at the hospital. But he 
had died. 

The crowd opened, and the priest came through. He 
wore a purple velvet robe, and behind him came his 
deacons and four small acolytes in surplices. Up the 
steps went the little procession. And the doors of the 
hospital closed behind it. 

The civilians turned and went away. The soldiers 
stood rigid in the cold sunshine, and waited. A little 
boy kicked a football over the sand. The guns at 
Nieuport crashed and hammered. 

After a time the doors opened again. The boy 
picked up his football and came closer. The musicians 
blew on their fingers to warm them. The dead young 
officer was carried out. His sword gleamed in the sun. 
They carried the casket carefully, not to disorder the 
carefully folded tunic or the pathetic cap. The body 
was placed in an ambulance. At a signal the band com- 
menced to play and the soldiers closed in round the 
ambulance. 

The path of glory, indeed! 

But it was not this boyish officer's hope of glory 
that had brought this scene to pass. He died fighting a 
defensive war, to save what was left to him of the 
country he loved. He had no dream of empire, no 



48 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

vision of commercial supremacy, no thrill of conquest 
as an invaded and destroyed country bent to the inev- 
itable. For months since Liege he had fought a losing 
fight, a fight that Belgium knew from the beginning 
must be a losing fight, until such time as her allies 
could come to her aid. Like the others, he had nothing 
to gain by this war and everything to lose. 

He had lost. The ambulance moved away. 

I was frequently in La Panne after that day. I 
got to know well the road from Dunkirk, with its 
bordering of mud and ditch, its heavy transports, its 
grey gunboats in the canals that followed it on one 
side, its long lines of over-laden soldiers, its automo- 
biles that travelled always at top speed. I saw pictures 
that no artist will ever paint — of horrors and beauties, 
of pathos and comedy; of soldiers washing away the 
filth of the trenches in the cold waters of canals and 
ditches; of refugees flying by day from the towns, and 
returning at night to their ruined houses to sleep in the 
cellars; of long processions of Spahis, Arabs from Al- 
geria, silhouetted against the flat sky line against a 
setting sun, their tired horses moving slowly, with 
drooping heads, while their riders, in burnoose and 
turban, rode with loose reins; of hostile aeroplanes 
sailing the afternoon breeze like lazy birds, while shells 
from the anti-aircraft guns burst harmlessly below 
them in small balloon-shaped clouds of smoke. 

But never in all that time did I overcome the sense 
of unreality, and always I was obsessed by the injus- 
tice, the wanton waste and cost and injustice of it all. 
The baby at La Panne — why should it go through life 
on stumps instead of legs? The boyish officer — why 
should he have died? The little sixteen-year-old sol- 
dier who had been blinded and who sat all day by the 



" 'TWAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 49 

phonograph, listening to Madame Butterfly, Tipperary, 
and Harry Lauder's A Wee Deoch-an'-Doris — why 
should he never see again what I could see from the 
window beside him, the winter sunset over the sea, 
the glistening white of the sands, the flat line of the 
surf as it crept in to the sentries' feet? Why? Why? 

All these wrecks of boys and men, where are they 
to go? What are they to do? Blind and maimed, 
weak from long privation followed by great suffering, 
what is to become of them when the hospital has ful- 
filled its function and they are discharged "cured"? 
Their occupations, their homes, their usefulness are 
gone. They have not always even clothing in which 
to leave the hospital. If it was not destroyed by the 
shell or shrapnel that mutilated them it was worn be- 
yond belief and redemption. Such ragged uniforms 
as I have seen! Such tragedies of trousers! Such 
absurd and heart-breaking tunics ! 

When, soon after, I was presented to the King of 
the Belgians, these very questions had written lines in 
his face. It is easy to believe that King Albert of Bel- 
gium has buried his private anxieties in the common 
grief and stress of his people. 



CHAPTER V 
A TALK WITH THE KING OF THE BELGIANS 



THE letter announcing that I was to have an audi- 
ence with the King of the Belgians reached me 
at Dunkirk, France, on the evening of the day before 
the date set. It was brief and to the effect that the 
King would receive me the next afternoon at two 
o'clock at the Belgian Army headquarters. 

The object of my visit was well known; and, be- 
cause I wished an authoritative statement to give to 
America, I had requested that the notes of my conver- 
sation with His Majesty should be officially approved. 
This request was granted. The manuscript of the in- 
terview that follows was submitted to His Majesty for 
approval. It is published as it occurred, and nothing 
has been added to the record. 

A general from the Ministry of War came to the 
Hotel des Arcades, in Dunkirk, and I was taken in a 
motor car to the Belgian Army headquarters some 
miles away. As the general who conducted me had 
influenza, and I was trying to keep my nerves in good 
order, it was rather a silent drive. The car, as are all 
military cars — and there are no others — was driven by 
a soldier-chauffeur by whose side sat the general's or- 
derly. Through the narrow gate, with its drawbridge 
guarded by many sentries, we went out into the open 
country. 

50 



TALK WITH THE KING OF THE BELGIANS 51 

The road, considering the constant traffic of heavy 
transports and guns, was very fair. It is under con- 
stant repair. At first, during this severe winter, on 
account of rain and snow, accidents were frequent. 
The road, on both sides, was deep in mud and prolific 
of catastrophe; and even now, with conditions much 
better, there are numerous accidents. Cars all travel 
at frightful speed. There are no restrictions, and it is 
nothing to see machines upset and abandoned in the 
low-lying fields that border the road. 

Conditions, however, are better than they were. 
Part of the conservation system has been the building 
of narrow ditches at right angles to the line of the 
road, to lead off the water. Every ten feet or so there 
is a gutter filled with fagots. 

I had been in the general's car before. The red- 
haired Fleming with the fierce moustache who drove it 
was a speed maniac, and passing the frequent sentries 
was only a matter of the password. A signal to slow 
down, given by the watchful sentry, a hoarse whis- 
per of the password as the car went by, and on 
again at full speed. There was no bothering with 
papers. 

On each side of the road were trenches, barbed-wire 
entanglements, earthen barriers, canals filled with 
barges. And on the road were lines of transports and 
a file of Spahis on horseback, picturesque in their 
flowing burnouses, bearded and dark-skinned, riding 
their undipped horses through the roads under the 
single rows of trees. We rode on through a village 
where a pig had escaped from a slaughterhouse and 
was being pursued by soldiers — and then, at last, army 
headquarters and the King of the Belgians. 

There was little formality. I was taken in charge 



52 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

by the King's equerry, who tapped at a closed door. 
I drew a long breath. 

"Madame Rinehart!" said the equerry, and stood 
aside. 

There was a small screen in front of the door. I 
went round it. Standing alone before the fire was 
Albert I, King of the Belgians. I bowed; then we 
shook hands and he asked me to sit down. 

It was to be a conversation rather than an interview ; 
but as it was to be given as accurately as possible to 
the American people, I was permitted to make careful 
notes of both questions and answers. It was to be, in 
effect, a statement of the situation in Belgium as the 
King of the Belgians sees it. 

I spoke first of a message to America. 

"I have already sent a message to America," he 
informed me; "quite a long message. We are, of 
course, intensely appreciative of what Americans have 
done for Belgium." 

"They are anxious to do what they can. The gen- 
eral feeling is one of great sympathy." 

"Americans are both just and humane," the King 
replied ; "and their system of distribution is excellent. 
I do not know what we should have done without the 
American Relief Committees." 

"Is there anything further Your Majesty can sug- 
gest?" 

"They seem to have thought of everything," the 
King said simply. "The food is invaluable — particu- 
larly the flour. It has saved many from starvation." 

"But there is still need?" 

"Oh, yes — great need." 

It was clear that the subject was a tragic one. The 
King of the Belgians loves his people, as they love 



TALK WITH THE KING OF THE BELGIANS 53 

him, with a devotion that is completely unselfish. That 
he is helpless to relieve so much that they are com- 
pelled to endure is his great grief. 

His face clouded. Probably he was seeing', as he 
must always see, the dejected figures of the peasants in 
the fields; the long files of his soldiers as they made 
their way through wet and cold to the trenches; the 
destroyed towns; the upheaval of a people. 

"What is possible to know of the general condition 
of affairs in that part of Belgium occupied by the Ger- 
mans ?" I asked. "I do not mean in regard to food 
only, but the general condition of the Belgian 
people. " 

"It is impossible to say," was the answer. "During 
the invasion it was very bad. It is a little better now, 
of course; but here we are on the wrong side of the 
line to form any ordered judgment. To gain a real 
conception of the situation it would be necessary to 
go through the occupied portions from town to town, 
almost from house to house. Have you been in the 
other part of Belgium ?" 

"Not yet; I may go." 

"You should do that — see Louvain, Aerschot, Ant- 
werp — see the destroyed towns for yourself. No one 
can tell you. You must see them." 

I was not certain that I should be permitted to make 
such a journey, but the King waved my doubts aside 
with a gesture. 

"You are an American," he said. "It would be 
quite possible and you would see just what has hap- 
pened. You would see open towns that were bom- 
barded; other towns that were destroyed after occu- 
pation! You would see a country ruthlessly devas- 
tated ; our wonderful monuments destroyed ; our archi- 



54 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

tectural and artistic treasures sacrificed without reason 
— without any justification." 

"But as a necessity of war?" I asked. 

"Not at all. The Germans have saved buildings 
when it suited their convenience to do so. No military 
necessity dictated the destruction of Louvain. It was 
not bombarded. It was deliberately destroyed. But, 
of course, you know that." 

"The matter of the violation of Belgium's neutrality 
still remains an open question," I said. "I have seen 
in American facsimile copies of documents referring 
to conversations between staff officers of the British 
and Belgian armies — documents that were found in 
the ministerial offices at Brussels when the Germans 
occupied that city last August. Of course I think most 
Americans realise that, had they been of any real 
importance, they would have been taken away. There 
was time enough. But there are some, I know, who 
think them significant." 

The King of the Belgians shrugged his shoulders. 

"They were of an unofficial character and entirely 
without importance. The German Staff probably 
knew all about them long before the declaration of 
war. They themselves had, without doubt, discussed 
and recorded similar probabilities in case of war with 
other countries. It is a common practice in all army 
organisations to prepare against different contingen- 
cies. It is a question of military routine only." 

"There was no justification, then, for the violation 
of Eelgian neutrality?" I inquired. 

"None whatever! The German violation of Bel- 
gian neutrality was wrong," he said emphatically. 
"On the fourth of August their own chancellor admit- 
ted it. Belgium had no thought of war. The Belgians 



TALK WITH THE KING OF THE BELGIANS 55 

are a peace-loving people, who had every reason to 
believe in the friendship of Germany." 

The next question was a difficult one. I inquired 
as to the behaviour of the Germans in the conquered 
territory; but the King made no sweeping condemna- 
tion of the German Army. 

"Fearful things have been done, particularly during 
the invasion, " he said, weighing his words carefully; 
"but it would be unfair to condemn the whole German 
Army. Some regiments have been most humane ; but 
others behaved very badly. Have you seen the gov- 
ernment report?'' 

I said I had not seen it, though I had heard that a 
careful investigation had been made. 

"The government was very cautious," His Majesty 
said. "The investigation was absolutely impartial and 
as accurate as it could be made. Doubts were cast on 
all statements — even those of the most dependable 
witnesses — until they could be verified." 

"They were verified ?" 

"Yes; again and again." 

"By the victims themselves?" 

"Not always. The victims of extreme cruelty do 
not live to tell of it; but German soldiers themselves 
have told the story. We have had here many hun- 
dreds of journals, taken from dead or imprisoned 
Germans, furnishing elaborate details of most atro- 
cious acts. The government is keeping these journals. 
They furnish powerful and incontrovertible testimony 
of what happened in Belgium when it was swept over 
by a brutal army. That was, of course, during the 
invasion — such things are not happening now so far 
as we know." 

He had spoken quietly, but there was a new note of 



56 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

strain in his voice. The burden of the King of the 
Belgians is a double one. To the horror of war has 
been added the unnecessary violation and death of 
noncombatants. 

The King then referred to the German advance 
through Belgian territory. 

"Thousands of civilians have been killed without 
reason. The execution of noncombatants is not war, 
and no excuse can be made for it. Such deeds cannot 
be called war." 

"But if the townspeople fired on the Germans?" I 
asked. 

"All weapons had been deposited in the hands of 
the town authorities. It is unlikely that any organised 
attack by civilians could have been made. However, 
if in individual cases shots were fired at the German 
soldiers, this may always be condoned in a country 
suffering invasion. During an occupation it would be 
different, naturally. No excuse can be offered for 
such an action in occupied territory." 

"Various Belgian officers have told me of seeing 
crowds of men, women and children driven ahead of 
the German Army to protect the troops. This is so 
incredible that I must ask whether it has any founda- 
tion of truth." 

"It is quite true. It is a barbarous and inhuman 
system of protecting the German advance. When the 
Belgian soldiers fired on the enemy they killed their 
own people. Again and again innocent civilians of 
both sexes were sacrificed to protect the invading army 
during attacks. A terrible slaughter!" 

His Majesty made no effort to conceal his great 
grief and indignation. And again, as before, there 
seemed to be nothing to say. 



TALK WITH THE KING OF THE BELGIANS 57 

"Even now," I said, "when the Belgians return the 
German artillery fire they are bombarding their own 
towns." 

"That is true, of course ; but what can we do? And 
the civilian population is very brave. They fear inva- 
sion, but they no longer pay any attention to bombs. 
They work in the fields quite calmly, with shells drop- 
ping about. They must work or starve/' 

He then spoke of the morale of the troops, which is 
excellent, and of his sympathy for their situation. 

"Their families are in Belgium," he said. "Many 
of them have heard nothing for months. But they 
are wonderful. They are fighting for life and to 
regain their families, their homes and their country. 
Christmas was very sad for them." 

"In the event of the German Army's retiring from 
Belgium, do you believe, as many do, that there will 
be more destruction of cities ? Brussels, for instance ?" 

"I think not." 

I referred to my last visit to Belgium, when Brussels 
was the capital; and to the contrast now, when La 
Panne a small seaside resort hardly more than a vil- 
lage, contains the court, the residence of the King and 
Queen, and of the various members of his household. 
It seemed to me unlikely that La Panne would be at- 
tacked, as the Queen of the Belgians is a Bavarian. 

"Do you think La Panne will be bombarded?" I 
asked. 

"Why not?" 

"I thought that possibly, on account of Your Maj- 
esty and the Queen being there, it would be spared. 

"They are bombarding Furnes, where I go every 
day," he replied. "And there are German aeroplanes 
overhead all the time." 



58 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

The mention of Furnes brought to my mind the 
flooded district near that village, which extends from 
Nieuport to Dixmude. 

"Belgium has made a great sacrifice in flooding her 
lowlands," I said. "Will that land be as fertile as 
before ?" 

"Not for several years. The flooding of the pro- 
ductive land in the Yser district was only carried out 
as a military necessity. The water is sea water, of 
course, and will have a bad effect on the soil. Have 
you seen the flooded district?" 

I told His Majesty that I had been to the Belgian 
trenches, and then across the inundated country to one 
of the outposts; a remarkable experience — one I 
should never forget. 

The conversation shifted to America and her point 
of view; to American women who have married 
abroad. His Majesty mentioned especially Lady 
Curzon. Two children of the King were with Lord 
Curzon, in England, at the time. The Crown Prince, 
a boy of fourteen, tall and straight like his father, was 
with the King and Queen. 

The King had risen and was standing in his favour- 
ite attitude, his elbow on the mantelpiece. I rose also. 

"I was given some instructions as to the ceremonial 
of this audience," I said. "I am afraid I have not 
followed them!" 

"What were you told to do?" said His Majesty, 
evidently amused. Then, without waiting for a reply : 

"We are very democratic — we Belgians," he said. 
"More democratic than the Americans. The President 
of the United States has great power — very great 
power. He is a czar." 

He referred to President Wilson in terms of great 



TALK WITH THE KING OF THE BELGIANS 59 

esteem — not only as the President but as a man. He 
spoke, also, with evident admiration of Mr. Roosevelt 
and Mr. McKinley, both of whom he had met. 

I looked at the clock. It was after three and the 
interview had begun at two. I knew it was time for 
me to go, but I had been given no indication that the 
interview was at an end. Fragments of the coaching 
I had received came to my mind, but nothing useful ; 
so I stated my difficulty frankly, and again the King's 
serious face lighted up with a smile. 

"There is no formality here; but if you are going 
we must find the general for you." 

So we shook hands and I went out ; but the beautiful 
courtesy of the soldier King of the Belgians brought 
him out to the doorstep with me. 

That is the final picture I have of Albert I, King of 
the Belgians — a tall young man, very fair and blue- 
eyed, in the dark blue uniform of a lieutenant-general 
of his army, wearing no orders or decorations, stand- 
ing bareheaded in the wind and pointing out to me the 
direction in which I should go to find the general who 
had brought me. 

He is a very courteous gentleman, with the eyes of 
one who loves the sea, for the King of the Belgians is 1 
a sailor in his heart; a tragic and heroic figure but 
thinking himself neither — thinking of himself not at 
all, indeed; only of his people, whose griefs are his to 
share but not to lighten; living day and night under 
the rumble of German artillery at Nieuport and Dix- 
mude in that small corner of Belgium which remains 
to him. 

He is a King who, without suspicion of guilt, has 
lost his country; who has seen since August of 1914 
two-thirds of his army lost, his beautiful and ancient 



60 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

towns destroyed, his fertile lands thrown open to the 
sea. 

I went on. The guns were still at work. At Nieu- 
pcrt, Dixmude, Furnes, Pervyse — all along that flat, 
flooded region — the work of destruction was going 
on. Overhead, flying high, were two German aero- 
planes — the eyes of the war. 



Not politically, but humanely, it was time to make 
to America an authoritative statement as to conditions 
in Belgium. 

The principle of non-interference in European poli- 
tics is one of national policy and not to be questioned. 
But there can be no justification for the destruction of 
property and loss of innocent lives in Belgium. Ger- 
many had plead to the neutral nations her necessity, 
and had plead eloquently. On the other hand, the 
English and French authorities during the first year 
of the war had preserved a dignified silence, confident 
of the justice of their cause. 

And official Belgium had made no complaint. She 
had bowed to the judgment of her allies, knowing 
that a time would come, at the end of the war, to 
speak of her situation and to demand justifiable 
redress. 

But a million homeless Belgians in England and 
Holland proclaimed and still proclaim their wretched- 
ness broadcast. The future may bring redress, but the 
present story of Belgium belongs to the world. Amer- 
ica, the greatest of the neutral countries, has a right to 
know now the suffering and misery of this patient, 
hard-working people. 

This war may last a long time ; the western armies 



TALK WITH THE KING OF THE BELGIANS 61 

are at a deadlock. Since November of 1914 the line 
has varied only slightly here and there ; has been pushed 
out or back only to straighten again. 

Advances may be counted by feet. From Nieuport 
to Ypres attacks are waged round solitary farms 
which, by reason of the floods, have become tiny 
islands protected by a few men, mitrailleuses, and en- 
tanglements of barbed wire. Small attacking bodies 
capture such an outpost, wading breast-deep — drown- 
ing when wounded — in the stagnant water. There 
are no glorious charges here, no contagion of courage ; 
simply a dogged and desperate struggle — a gain which 
the next day may see forfeited. The only thing that 
goes on steadily is the devastating work of the heavy 
guns on each side. 

Meantime, both in England and in France, there has 
been a growing sentiment that the government's policy 
of silence has been a mistake. The cudgel of public 
opinion is a heavy one. The German propaganda in 
America has gone on steadily. There is no argument 
where one side only is presented. That splendid and 
solid part of the American people, the German popu- 
lation, essentially and naturally patriotic, keeping their 
faith in the Fatherland, is constantly presenting its 
case ; and against that nothing official has been offiered. 

England is fighting heroically, stoically; but her 
stoicism is a vital mistake. This silence has nothing 
whatever to do with military movements, their success 
or their failure. It is more fundamental, an inherent 
characteristic of the English character, founded on 
reserve — perhaps tinged with that often misunder- 
stood conviction of the Britisher that other persons 
cannot be really interested in what is strictly another's 
affairs. 



62 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

The Allies are beginning to realise, however, that 
this war is not their own affair alone. It affects the 
world too profoundly. Mentally, morally, spiritually 
and commercially, it is an upheaval in which all must 
suffer. 

And the English people, who have sent and are send- 
ing the very flower of their country's manhood to the 
front, are beginning to regret the error in judgment 
that has left the rest of the English-speaking world in 
comparative ignorance of the true situation. 

They are sending the best they have — men of high 
ideals, who, as volunteers, go out to fight for what 
they consider a just cause. The old families, in which 
love of country and self-sacrifice are traditions, have 
suffered heavily. 

The crux of the situation is Belgium — the violation 
of her neutrality; the conduct of the invading army; 
her unnecessary and unjustifiable suffering. And Bel- 
gium has felt that the time to speak has come. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE CAUSE 



THE^ Belgian Red Cross may well be proud of 
the hospital at La Panne. It is modern, thor- 
oughly organised, completely equipped. Within two 
weeks of the outbreak of the war it was receiving pa- 
tients. It was not at the front then. But the German 
tide has forced itself along until now it is almost on 
the line. 

Generally speaking, order had taken the place of 
the early chaos in the hospital situation when I was 
at the front. The British hospitals were a satisfac- 
tion to visit. The French situation was not so good. 
The isolated French hospitals were still in need of 
everything, even of anaesthetics. The lack of an or- 
ganised nursing system was being keenly felt. 

But the early handicaps of unpreparedness and over- 
whelming numbers of patients had been overcome to a 
large extent. Scientific management and modern effi- 
ciency had stepped in. Things were still capable of 
improvement. Gentlemen ambulance drivers are not 
always to be depended on. Nurses are not all of the 
same standard of efficiency. Supplies of one sort ex- 
ceeded the demand, while other things were entirely 
lacking. Food of the kind that was needed by the 
very ill was scarce, expensive and difficult to secure 
at any price. 

63 



64 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

But the things that have been done are marvellous. 
Surgery has not failed. The stereoscopic X-ray and 
antitetanus serum are playing their active part. Once 
out of the trenches a soldier wounded at the front has 
as much chance now as a man injured in the pursuit 
of a peaceful occupation. 

Once out of the trenches ! For that is the question. 
The ambulances must wait for night. It is not in the 
hospitals but in the ghastly hours between injury and 
darkness that the case of life or death is decided. 
That is where surgical efficiency fails against the bru- 
tality of this war, where the Red Cross is no longer 
respected, where it is not possible to gather in the 
wounded under the hospital flag, where there is no 
armistice and no pity. This is war, glorious war, 
which those who stay at home say smugly is good for 
a nation. 

But there are those who are hurt, not in the trenches 
but in front of them. In that narrow strip of No 
Man's Land between the confronting armies, and ex- 
tending four hundred and fifty miles from the sea 
through Belgium and France, each day uncounted 
numbers of men fall, and, falling, must lie. The ter- 
rible thirst that follows loss of blood makes them 
faint; the cold winds and snows and rains of what 
has been a fearful winter beat on them; they cannot 
have water or shelter. The lucky ones die, but there 
are some that live, and live for days. This too is war, 
glorious war, which is good for a nation, which makes 
its boys into men, and its men into these writhing 
figures that die so slowly and so long. 

I have seen many hospitals. Some of the make- 
shifts would be amusing were they not so pathetic. 
Old chapels with beds and supplies piled high before 



THE CAUSE 65 



the altar; kindergarten rooms with childish mottoes 
on the walls, from which hang fever charts ; nuns' 
cubicles thrown open to doctors and nurses as living 
quarters. 

At La Panne, however, there are no makeshifts. 
There are no wards, so called. But many of the large 
rooms hold three beds. All the rooms are airy and 
well lighted. True, there is no lift, and the men must 
be carried down the staircases to the operating rooms 
on the lower floor, and carried back again. But the 
carrying is gently done. 

There are two operating rooms, each with two mod- 
ern operating tables. The floors are tiled, the walls, 
ceiling and all furnishings white. Attached to the 
operating rooms is a fully equipped laboratory and 
an X-ray room. I was shown the stereoscopic X-ray 
apparatus by which the figure on the plate stands out 
in relief, like any stereoscopic picture. Every large 
hospital I saw had this apparatus, which is invaluable 
in locating bullets and pieces of shell or shrapnel. 
Under the X-ray, too, extraction frequently takes 
place, the operators using long-handled instruments 
and gloves that are soaked in a solution of lead and 
thus become impervious to the rays so destructive to 
the tissues. 

Later on I watched Doctor DePage operate at this 
hospital. I was put into a uniform, and watched a 
piece of shell taken from a man's brain and a great 
blood clot evacuated. Except for the red cross on 
each window and the rattle of the sash under the 
guns, I might have been in one of the leading Ameri- 
can hospitals and war a century away. There were 
the same white uniforms on the surgeons; the same 
white gauze covering their heads and swathing their 



66 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

faces to the eyes; the same silence, the same care as 
to sterilisation; the same orderly rows of instruments 
on a glass stand ; the same nurses, alert and quiet ; the 
same clear white electric light overhead; the same 
rubber gloves, the same anaesthetists and assistants. 

It was twelve minutes from the time the operating 
surgeon took the knife until the wound was closed. 
The head had been previously shaved by one of the 
assistants, and painted with iodine. In twelve minutes 
the piece of shell lay in my hand. The stertorous 
breathing was easier, bandages were being adjusted, 
the next case was being anaesthetised and prepared. 

I wish I could go further. I wish I could follow 
that peasant-soldier to recovery and health. I wish I 
could follow him back to his wife and children, to his 
little farm in Belgium. I wish I could even say he 
recovered. But I cannot. I do not know. The war 
is a series of incidents w r ith no beginning and no end. 
The veil lifts for a moment and drops again. 

I saw other cases brought down for operation at 
the Ambulance Ocean. One I shall never forget. 
Here was a boy again, looking up with hopeful, fully 
conscious eyes at the surgeons. He had been shot 
through the spine. From his waist down he was 
inert, helpless. He smiled. He had come to be oper- 
ated on. Now all would be well. The great surgeons 
would work over him, and he would walk again. 

When after a long consultation they had to tell him 
they could not operate, I dared not look at his eyes. 

Again, what is he to do ? Where is he to go ? He 
is helpless, in a strange land. He has no country, no 
people, no money. And he will live, think of it! 

I wish I could leaven all this with something cheer- 
ful. I wish I could smile over the phonograph play- 



THE CAUSE 67 



ing again and again A Wee Deoch-an'-Doris in that 
room for convalescents that overlooks the sea. I wish 
I could think that the baby with both legs off will 
grow up without missing what it has never known. I 
wish I could be reconciled because the dead young 
officer had died the death of a patriot and a soldier, 
or that the boy I saw dying in an upper room, from 
shock and loss of blood following an amputation, is 
only a pawn in the great chess game of empires. I 
wish I could believe that the two women on the floor 
below, one with both arms gone, another with one arm 
off and her back ripped open by a shell, are the legiti- 
mate fruits of a holy war. I cannot. I can see only 
greed and lust of battle and ambition. 

In a bright room I saw a German soldier. He had 
the room to himself. He was blue eyed and yellow 
haired, with a boyish and contagious smile. He knew 
no more about it all than I did. It must have be- 
wildered him in the long hours that he lay there alone. 
He did not hate these people. He never had hated 
them. It was clear, too, that they did not hate him. 
For they had saved a gangrenous leg for him when all 
hope seemed ended. He lay there, with his white 
coverlet drawn to his chin, and smiled at the surgeon. 
They were evidently on the best of terms. 

"How goes it?" asked the surgeon cheerfully in 
German. 

"Sehr gut" he said, and eyed me curiously. 

He was very proud of the leg, and asked that I see 
it. It was in a cast. He moved it about triumphantly. 
Probably all over Germany, as over France and this 
corner of Belgium, just such little scenes occur daily, 
hourly. 

The German peasant, like the French and the Bel- 



68 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

gian, is a peaceable man. He is' military but not mili- 
tant. He is sentimental rather than impassioned. He 
loves Christmas and other feast days. He is not ambi- 
tious. He fights bravely, but he would rather sing or 
make a garden. 

It is over the bent shoulders of these peasants that 
the great Continental army machines must march. 
The German peasant is poor, because for forty years 
he has been paying the heavy tax of endless arma- 
ment. The French peasant is poor, because for forty 
years he has been struggling to recover from the 
drain of the huge war indemnity demanded by Ger- 
many in 1 87 1. The Russian peasant toils for a re- 
mote government, with which his sole tie is the tax- 
gatherer; toils with childish faith for The Little 
Father, at whose word he may be sent to battle for a 
cause of which he knows nothing. 

Germany's militarism, England's navalism, Rus- 
sia's autocracy, France, graft-ridden in high places 
and struggling for rehabilitation after a century of 
war — and, underneath it all, bearing it on bent shoul- 
ders, men like this German prisoner, alone in his room 
and puzzling it out! It makes one wonder if the re- 
sult of this war will not be a great and overwhelm- 
ing individualism, a protest of the unit against the 
mass; if Socialism, which has apparently died of an 
ideal, will find this ideal but another name for tyranny, 
and rise from its grave a living force. 

Now and then a justifiable war is fought, for lib- 
erty perhaps, or like our Civil War, for a great prin- 
ciple. There are wars that are inevitable. Such wars 
are frequently revolutions and have their origins in 
the disaffection of a people. 

But here is a world war about which volumes are 



THE CAUSE 69 



being written to discover the cause. Here were pros- 
perous nations, building wealth and culture on a basis 
of peace. Europe was apparently more in danger of 
revolution than of international warfare. It is not 
only war without a known cause, it is an unexpected 
war. Only one of the nations involved showed any 
evidence of preparation. England is not yet ready. 
Russia has not yet equipped the men she has mobilised. 

Is this war, then, because the balance of power is 
so nicely adjusted that a touch turns the scale, whether 
that touch be a Kaiser's dream of empire or the eyes 
of a Czar turned covetously toward the South? 

I tried to think the thing out during the long 
nights when the sound of the heavy guns kept me 
awake. It was hard, because I knew so little, nothing 1 
at all of European politics, or war, or diplomacy. 
When I tried to be logical, I became emotional. In- 
stead of reason I found in myself only a deep resent- 
ment. 

I could see only that blue-eyed German in his bed, 
those cheery and cold and ill-equipped Belgians drill- 
ing on the sands at La Panne. 

But on one point I was clear. Away from all the 
imminent questions that filled the day, the changing 
ethics of war, its brutalities, its hideous necessities, 
one point stood out clear and distinct. That the real 
issue is not the result, but the cause of this war. That 
the world must dig deep into the mire of European 
diplomacy to find that cause, and having found it 
must destroy it. That as long as that cause persists, 
be it social or political, predatory or ambitious, there 
will be more wars. Again it will be possible for a 
handful of men in high place to overthrow a world. 

And one of the first results of the discovery of that 



70 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

cause will be a demand of the people to know what 
their representatives are doing. Diplomacy, instead 
of secret whispering, a finger to its lips, must shouf 
from the housetops. Great nations cannot be gov- 
erned from cellars. Diplomats are not necessarily 
conspirators. There is such a thing as walking in the 
sunlight. 

There is no such thing in civilisation as a warlike 
people. There are peaceful people, or aggressive peo- 
ple, or military people. But there are none that do 
not prefer peace to war, until, inflamed and roused 
by those above them who play this game of empires, 
they must don the panoply of battle and go forth. 






CHAPTER VII 
THE STORY WITH AN END 



I" N its way that hospital at La Panne epitomised the 
■*■ whole tragedy of the great war. Here were women 
and children, innocent victims when the peaceful near- 
by market town of Furnes was being shelled ; here was 
a telegraph operator who had stuck to his post under 
furious bombardment until both his legs were crushed. 
He had been decorated by the king for his bravery. 
Here were Belgian aristocrats without extra clothing 
or any money whatever, and women whose whole lives 
had been shielded from pain or discomfort. One of 
them, a young woman whose father is among the larg- 
est landowners in Belgium, is in charge of the villa 
where the uniforms of wounded soldiers are cleaned 
and made fit for use again. Over her white uniform 
she wore, in the bitter wind, a thin tan raincoat. We 
walked together along the beach. I protested. 

"You are so thinly clad," I said. "Surely you do 
not go about like that always!" 

She shrugged her shoulders. 

"It is all I have," she said philosophically. "And I 
have no money — none. None of us has." 

A titled Belgian woman with her daughter had just 
escaped from Brussels. She was very sad, for she 
had lost her only boy. But she smiled a little as she 
told me of their having nothing but what they wore, 

71 



72 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

and that the night before they had built a fire in their 
room, washed their linen, and gone to bed, leaving it 
until morning to dry. 

Across the full width of the hospital stretched the 
great drawing-room of the hotel, now a recreation 
place for convalescent soldiers. Here all day the 
phonograph played, the nurses off duty came in to 
write letters, the surgeons stopped on their busy 
rounds to speak to the men or to watch for a few 
minutes the ever-changing panorama of the beach, 
with its background of patrolling gunboats, its engi- 
neers on rest playing football, its occasional aeroplanes, 
carrying each two men — a pilot and an observer. 

The men sat about. There were boys with the 
stringy beards of their twenty years. There were 
empty sleeves, many crutches, and some who must be 
led past the chairs and tables — who will always have 
to be led. 

They were all cheerful. But now and then, when 
the bombardment became more insistent, some of them 
would raise their heads and listen, with the strained 
faces of those who see a hideous picture. 

The young woman who could not buy a heavy coat 
showed me the villa adjoining the hospital, where the 
clothing of wounded soldiers is cared for. It is placed 
first in a fumigating plant in the basement and thor- 
oughly sterilised. After that it is brushed of its en- 
crusted mud and blood stains are taken out by soaking 
in cold water. It is then dried and thoroughly sunned. 
Then it is ready for the second floor. 

Here tailors are constantly at work mending gar- 
ments apparently unmendable, pressing, steaming, 
patching, sewing on buttons. The ragged uniforms 
come out of that big bare room clean and whole, 



THE STORY WITH AN END 73 

ready to be tied up in new burlap bags, tagged, and 
placed in racks of fresh white cedar. There is no 
odour in this room, although innumerable old garments 
are stored in it. 

In an adjoining room the rifles and swords of the 
injured men stand in racks, the old and unserviceable 
rifles with which Belgium was forced to equip so many 
of her soldiers side by side with the new and scientific 
German guns. Along the wall are officers' swords, 
and above them, on shelves, the haversacks of the 
common soldiers, laden with the things that comprise 
their whole comfort. 

I examined one. How few the things were and 
how worn! And yet the haversack was heavy. As 
he started for the trenches, this soldier who was car- 
ried back, he had on his shoulders this haversack of 
hide tanned with the hair on. In it he had two pairs 
of extra socks, worn and ragged, a tattered and dirty 
undershirt, a photograph of his wife, rags for clean- 
ing his gun, a part of a loaf of dry bread, the remnant 
of what had been a pair of gloves, now fingerless and 
stiff with rain and mud, a rosary, a pair of shoes that 
the woman of the photograph would have wept and 
prayed over, some extra cartridges and a piece of 
leather. Perhaps he meant to try to mend the shoes. 

And here again I wish I could finish the story. I 
wish I could tell whether he lived or died — whether he 
carried that knapsack back to battle, or whether he 
died and its pitiful contents were divided among those 
of his comrades who were even more needy than he 
had been. But the veil lifts for a moment and drops 
again. 

Two incidents stand out with distinctness from 
those first days in La Panne, when, thrust with amaz- 



74 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

ing rapidity into the midst of war, my mind was a 
chaos of interest, bewilderment and despair. 

One is of an old abbe, talking earnestly to a young 
Belgian noblewoman who had recently escaped from 
Brussels with only the clothing she wore. 

The abbe was round of face and benevolent. I had 
met him before, at Calais, where he had posed me in 
front of a statue and taken my picture. His enthu- 
siasm over photography was contagious. He had 
made a dark room from a closet in an old convent, 
and he owned a little American camera. With this 
carefully placed on a tripod and covered with a black 
cloth, he posed me carefully, making numerous excur- 
sions under the cloth. In that cold courtyard, under 
the marble figur$ of Joan of Arc, he was a warm and 
human and most alive figure, in his flat black shoes, his 
long black soutane with its woollen sash, his woollen 
muffler and spectacles, with the eternal cigarette, that 
is part and parcel of every Belgian, dangling loosely 
from his lower lip. 

The surgeons and nurses who were watching the 
operation looked on with affectionate smiles. They 
loved him, this old priest, with his boyishness, his en- 
thusiasms, his tiny camera, his cigarette, his beautiful 
faith. He has promised me the photograph and what 
he promises he fulfils. But perhaps it was a failure. 
I hope not. He would be so disappointed — and so 
would I. 

So I was glad to meet him again at La Panne — ■ 
glad and surprised, for he was fifty miles north of 
where we had met before. But the abbe was changed. 
He was without the smile, without the cigarette. And 
he was speaking beseechingly to the smiling young 
refugee. This is what he was saying: 



THE STORY WITH AN END 75 

"I am glad, daughter, to help you in every way that 
I can. I have bought for you in Calais everything 
that you requested. But I implore you, daughter, do 
not ask me to purchase any more ladies' underlinen. 
It is most embarrassing." 

"But, father " 

"No underlinen," he repeated firmly. But it hurt 
him to refuse. One could see that. One imagined, 
too, that in his life of service there were few refusals. 
I left them still debating. The abbe's eyes were des- 
perate but his posture firm. One felt that there would 
be no surrender. 

Another picture, and I shall leave La Panne for a 
time. 

I was preparing to go. A telephone message to 
General Melis, of the Belgian Army, had brought his 
car to take me to Dunkirk. I was about to leave the 
protection of the Belgian Red Cross and place myself 
in the care of the ministry of war. I did not know 
what the future would bring, and the few days at 
La Panne and the Ambulance Ocean had made friends 
for me there. Things move quickly in war time. The 
conventions with which we bind up our souls in ordi- 
nary life are cut away. La Panne was already 
familiar and friendly territory. 

I went down the wide staircase. An ambulance had 
stopped and its burden was being carried in. The 
bearers rested the stretcher gently on the floor, and a 
nurse was immediately on her knees beside it. 

"Shell!" she said. 

The occupant was a boy of perhaps nineteen — a big 
boy. Some mother must have been very proud of 
him. He was fully conscious, and he looked up from 
his stained bandages with the same searching glance 



76 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

that now I have seen so often — the glance that would 
read its chances in the faces of those about. With 
his uninjured arm he threw back the blanket. His 
right arm was wounded, broken in two places, but 
not shattered. 

"He'll do nicely," said the nurse. "A broken jaw 
and the arm." 

His eyes were on me, so I bent over. 

"The nurse says you will do nicely," I assured him. 
"It will take time, but you will be very comfortable 
here, and " 

The nurse had been making further investigations. 
Now she turned back the other end of the blanket. 
His right leg had been torn off at the hip. 

That story has an end; for that boy died. 

The drive back to Dunkirk was a mad one. After- 
ward I learned to know that red-headed Flemish 
chauffeur, with his fiercely upcurled moustache and 
his contempt of death. Rather, perhaps, I learned 
to know his back. It was a reckless back. He wore a 
large army overcoat with a cape and a cap with a 
tassel. When he really got under way at anything 
from fifty miles an hour to the limit of the speedom- 
eter, which was ninety miles, the gilt tassel, which 
in the Belgian cap hangs over and touches the fore- 
head, had a way of standing up; the cape overcoat 
blew out in the air, cutting off my vision and my last 
hope. 

I regard that chauffeur as a menace on the high 
road. Certainly he is not a lady's chauffeur. He 
never will be. Once at night he took me — and the 
car — into an iron railroad gate, and bent the gate 
into a V. I was bent into the whole alphabet. 

The car was a limousine. After that one cold ride 



THE STORY WITH AN END 77 

from Calais to La Panne I was always in a limousine 
— always, of course, where a car could go at all. 
There may be other writers who have been equally 
fortunate, but most of the stories are of frightful 
hardships, I was not always comfortable. I was 
frequently in danger. But to and from the front I 
rode soft and warm and comfortable. Often I had a 
bottle of hot coffee and sandwiches. Except for the 
two carbines strapped to the speedometer, except for 
the soldier-chauffeur and the orderly who sat together 
outside, except for the eternal consulting of maps and 
showing of passes, I might have been making a pleas- 
ure tour of the towns of Northern France and Bel- 
gium. In fact, I have toured abroad during times of 
peace and have been less comfortable. 

I do not speak Flemish, so I could not ask the 
chauffeur to desist, slow down, or let me out to walk. 
I could only sit tight as the machine flew round cor- 
ners, elbowed transports, and threw a warning shriek 
to armoured cars, I wondered what would happen if 
we skidded into a wagon filled with high explosives. 
I tried to remember the conditions of my war insur- 
ance policy at Lloyd's. Also I recalled the unpleasant 
habit the sentries have of firing through the back of 
any car that passes them. 

I need not have worried. Except that once we killed 
a brown chicken, and that another time we almost 
skidded into the canal, the journey was uneventful, 
almost calm. One thing cheered me — all the other 
machines were going as fast as mine. A car that 
eased up its pace would be rammed from behind prob- 
ably. I am like the English — I prefer a charge to a 
rearguard engagement. 

My pass took me into Dunkirk. 



J8 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

It was dusk by that time. I felt rather lost and 
alone. I figured out what time it was at home. I 
wished some one would speak English. And I hated 
being regarded as a spy every mile or so, and depend- 
ing on a slip of paper as my testimonial of respect- 
ability. The people I knew were lunching about that 
time, or getting ready for bridge or the matinee. I 
wondered what would happen to me if the pass blew 
out of the orderly's hands and was lost in the canal. 

The chauffeur had been instructed to take me to the 
Mairie, a great dark building of stone halls and stair- 
ways, of sentries everywhere, of elaborate officers and 
much ceremony. But soon, in a great hall of the old 
building piled high with army supplies, I was talking 
to General Melis, and my troubles were over. A kindly 
and courteous gentleman, he put me at my ease at 
once. More than that, he spoke some English. He 
had received letters from England about me, and had 
telegraphed that he would meet me at Calais. He 
had, indeed, taken the time out of his busy day to go 
himself to Calais, thirty miles by motor, to meet me. 

I was aghast. "The boat went to Boulogne," I 
explained. "I had no idea, of course, that you would 
be there." 

"Now that you are here," he said, "it is all right. 
But — exactly what can I do for you?" 

So I told him. He listened attentively. A very fine 
and gallant soldier he was, sitting in that great room 
in the imposing uniform of his rank; a busy man, 
taking a little time out of his crowded day to see an 
American woman who had come a long way alone to 
see this tragedy that had overtaken his country. Or- 
derlies and officers came and went; the Mairie was a 
hive of seething activities. But he listened patiently. 



THE STORY WITH AN END 79 

"Where do- you want to go ?" he asked when I had 
finished. 

"I should like to stay here, if I may. And from 
here, of course, I should like to get to the front." 

"Where?" 

"Can I get to Ypres?" 

"It is not very safe." 

I proclaimed instantly and loudly that I was as 
brave as a lion ; that I did not know fear. He smiled. 
But when the interview was over it was arranged that 
I should have a permis de sSjour to stay in Dunkirk, 
and that on the following day the general himself and 
one of his officers having an errand in that direction 
would take me to Ypres. 

That night the town of Dunkirk was bombarded 
by some eighteen German aeroplanes. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE NIGHT RAID ON DUNKIRK 



FOUND that a room had been engaged for me 
A at the Hotel des Arcades. It was a very large 
room looking out over the public square and the 
statue of Jean Bart. It was really a princely room. 
No wonder they showed it to me proudly, and charged 
it to me royally. It was an upholstered room. Even 
the doors were upholstered. And because it was up- 
holstered and expensive and regal, it enjoyed the iso- 
lation of greatness. The other people in the hotel slept 
above or underneath. 

There were times when I longed for neighbours, 
when I yearned for some one to occupy the other 
royal apartment next door. But except for a Russian 
prince who stayed two days, and who snored in Rus- 
sian and kept two valets de chambre up all night in 
the hall outside my door polishing his boots and clean- 
ing his uniform, I was always alone in that part of the 
hotel. 

At my London hotel I had been lodged on the top 
floor, and twice in the night the hall porter had tele- 
phoned me to say that German Zeppelins were on 
their way to London. So I took care to find that in 
the Hotel des Arcades there were two stories and 
two layers of Belgian and French officers overhead. 

I felt very comfortable — until the air raid. Then 

80 






THE NIGHT RAID ON DUNKIRK 81 

two stories seemed absurd, inadequate. I would not 
have felt safe in the subcellar of the Woolworth 
Building. 

There were no women in the hotel at that time, 
with the exception of a hysterical lady manager, who 
sat in a boxlike office on the lower floor, and two 
chambermaids. A boy made my bed and brought me 
hot water. For several weeks at intervals he knocked 
at the door twice a day and said: "Et wat." I al- 
ways 1 thought it was Flemish for "May I come in?" 
At last I discovered that he considered this the Eng- 
lish for "hot water." The waiters in the cafe were 
too old to be sent to war, but I think the cook had 
gone. There was no cook. Some one put the food on 
the fire, but he was not a cook. 

Dunkirk had been bombarded several times, I 
learned. 

"They come in the morning," said my informant. 
"Every one is ordered off the streets. But they do 
little damage. One or two machines come and drop 
a bomb or two. That is all. Very few are killed." 

I protested. I felt rather bitter about it. I expected 
trouble along the lines, I explained. I knew I 
would be quite calm when I was actually at the front, 
and when I had my nervous system prepared for trou- 
ble. But in Dunkirk I expected to rest and relax. I 
needed sleep after La Panne. I thought something 
should be done about it. 

My informant shrugged his shoulders. He was 
English, and entirely fair. 

"Dunkirk is a fortified town," he explained. "It is 
quite legitimate. But you may sleep to-night. The 
raids are always daylight ones." 

So I commenced dinner calmly. I do not remember 



82 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

anything about that dinner. The memory of it has 
gone. I do recall looking about the dining room, and 
feeling a little odd and lonely, being the only woman. 
Then a gun boomed somewhere outside, and an alarm 
bell commenced to ring rapidly almost overhead. 
Instantly the officers in the room were on their feet, 
and every light went out. 

The tnaitre d' hotel, Emil, groped his way to my 
table and struck a match. 

"Aeroplanes !" he said. 

There was much laughing and talking as the officers 
moved to the door. The heavy velvet curtains were 
drawn. Some one near the door lighted a candle. 

"Where shall I go?" I asked. 

Emil, unlike the officers, was evidently nervous. 

"Madame is as safe here as anywhere," he said. 
"But if she wishes to join the others in the cellar " 

I wanted to go to the cellar or to crawl into the office 
safe. But I felt that, as the only woman and the only 
American about, I held the reputation of America and 
of my sex in my hands. The waiters had gone to 
the cellar. The officers had flocked to the cafe on the 
ground floor underneath. The alarm bell was still 
ringing. Over the candle, stuck in a saucer, Emil's 
face looked white and drawn. 

"I shall stay here," I said. "And I shall have 
coffee." 

The coffee was not bravado. I needed something 
hot. 

The gun, which had ceased, began to fire again. 
And then suddenly, not far away, a bomb exploded. 
Even through the closed and curtained windows the 
noise was terrific. Emil placed my coffee before me 
with shaking hands, and disappeared. 






THE NIGHT RAID ON DUNKIRK 83 

Another crash, and another, both very close ! 

There is nothing that I know of more hideous than 
an aerial bombardment. It requires an entire mental 
readjustment. The sky, which has always symbolised 
peace, suddenly spells death. Bombardment by the 
big guns of an advancing army is not unexpected. 
There is time for flight, a chance, too, for a reprisal. 
But against these raiders of the sky there is nothing. 
One sits and waits. And no town is safe. One 
moment there is a peaceful village with war twenty, 
fifty miles away. The next minute hell breaks loose. 
Houses are destroyed. Sleeping children die in their 
cradles. The streets echo and reecho with the din of 
destruction. The reply of the anti-aircraft guns is 
feeble, and at night futile. There is no bustle of 
escape. The streets are empty and dead, and in each 
house people, family groups, noncombatants, folk who 
ask only the right to work and love and live, sit and 
wait with blanched faces. 

More explosions, nearer still. They were trying 
for the Maine, which was round the corner. 

In the corridor outside the dining room a candle 
was lighted, and the English officer who had reas- 
sured me earlier in the evening came in. 

"You need not be alarmed," he said cheerfully. 
"It is really nothing. But out in the corridor it is 
quite safe and not so lonely." 

I went out. Two or three Belgian officers were 
there, gathered round a table on which was a candle 
stuck in a glass. They were having their after-dinner 
liqueurs and talking of many things. No one spoke 
of what was happening outside. I was given a corner, 
as being out of the draft. 

The explosions were incessant now. With each 



84 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

one the landlady downstairs screamed. As they came 
closer, cries and French adjectives came up the stair- 
case beside me in a nerve-destroying staccato of terror. 

At nine-thirty, when the aeroplanes had been over- 
head for three-quarters of an hour, there came a period 
of silence. There were no more explosions. 

"It is over," said one of the Belgian officers, smil- 
ing. "It is over, and madame lives!" 

But it was not over. 

I took advantage of the respite to do the forbidden 
thing and look out through one of the windows. The 
moon had come up and the square was flooded with 
light. All around were silent houses. No ray of light 
filtered through their closed and shuttered windows. 
The street lamps were out. Not an automobile was to 
be seen, not a hurrying human figure, not a dog. No 
night prowler disturbed that ghastly silence. The 
town lay dead under the clear and peaceful light of 
the moon. The white paving stones of the square 
gleamed, and in the centre, saturnine and defiant, stood 
uninjured the statue of Jean Bart, privateer and pri- 
vate of Dunkirk. 

Crash again! It was not over. The attack com- 
menced with redoubled fury. If sound were destruc- 
tive the little town of Dunkirk would be off the map 
of Northern France to-day. Sixty-seven bombs were 
dropped in the hour or so that the Germans were over- 
head. 

The bombardment continued. My feet were very 
cold, my head hot. The lady manager was silent; 
perhaps she had fainted. But Emil reappeared for a 
moment, his round white face protruding above the 
staircase well, to say that a Zeppelin was reported on 
-the way. 



THE NIGHT RAID ON DUNKIRK 85 

Then at last silence, broken soon by the rumble of 
ambulances as they started on their quest for the dead 
and the wounded. And Emil was wrong. There was 
no Zeppelin. The night raid on Dunkirk was history. 

The lights did not come on again. From that time 
on for several weeks Dunkirk lay at night in darkness. 
Houses showing a light were fined by the police. 
Automobiles were forbidden the use of lamps. One 
crept along the streets and the roads surrounding the 
town in a mysterious and nerve-racking blackness 
broken only by the shaded lanterns of the sentries as 
they stepped out with their sharp command to stop. 

The result of the raid? It was largely moral, a part 
of that campaign of terrorisation which is so strangely 
a part of the German system, which has set its army 
to burning cities, to bombarding the unfortified coast 
towns of England, to shooting civilians in conquered 
Belgium, and which now sinks the pitiful vessels of 
small traders and fishermen in the submarine-infested 
waters of the British Channel. It gained no military 
advantage, was intended to gain no military advan- 
tage. Not a soldier died. The great stores of military 
supplies were not wrecked. The victims were, as 
usual, women and children. The houses destroyed 
were the small and peaceful houses of noncombatants. 
Only two men were killed. They were in a side street 
when the first bomb dropped, and they tried to find an 
unlocked door, an open house, anything for shelter. 
It was impossible. Built like all French towns, with- 
out arcades or sheltering archways, the flat fagades of 
the closed and barricaded houses refused them sanc- 
tuary. The second bomb killed them both. 

Through all that night after the bombardment I 
could hear each hour the call of the trumpet from the 



KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 



great overhanging tower, a double note at once thin 
and musical, that reported no enemy in sight in the 
sky and all well. From far away, at the gate in the 
wall, came the reply of the distant watchman's horn 
softened by distance. 

"All well here also," it said. 

Following the trumpets the soft-toned chimes of the 
church rang out a hymn that has chimed from the old 
tower every hour for generations, extolling and prais- 
ing the Man of Peace. 

The ambulances had finished their work. The dead 
lay with folded hands, surrounded by candles, the 
lights of faith. And under the fading moon the old 
city rested and watched. 



CHAPTER IX 
NO MAN'S LAND 



From My Journal: 

T HAVE just had this conversation with the little 
*■ French chambermaid at my hotel. "You have not 
gone to mass, Mademoiselle ?" 

"I? No." 

"But here, so near the lines, I should think " 

"I do not go to church. There is no God." She 
looked up with red-rimmed, defiant eyes. "My hus- 
band has been killed," she said. "There is no God. 
If there was a God, why should my husband be killed? 
He had done nothing." 

This afternoon at three-thirty I am to start for the 
front. I am to see everything. The machine leaves 
the Mairie at three-thirty. 

Do you recall the school map on which the state of 
Texas was always pink and Rhode Island green? 
And Canada a region without colour, and therefore 
without existence? 

The map of Europe has become a battle line painted 
in three colours: yellow for the Belgian Army, blue 
for the British and red for the French. It is really a 
double line, for the confronting German Army is 
drawn in black. It is a narrow line to signify what it 
does — not only death and wanton destruction, but the 

87 



88 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

end of the myth of civilisation; a narrow line to prove 
that the brotherhood of man is a dream, that modern 
science is but an improvement on fifth-century bar- 
barity; that right, after all, is only might. 

It took exactly twenty- four hours to strip the shirt 
off the diplomacy of Europe and show the coat of 
mail underneath. 

It will take a century to hide that coat of mail. It 
will take a thousand years to rebuild the historic towns 
of Belgium. But not years, nor a reclothed diplomacy, 
nor the punishment of whichever traitor to the world 
brought this thing to pass, nor anything but God's 
great eternity, will ever restore to one mother her 
uselessly sacrificed son ; will quicken one of the figures 
that lie rotting along the battle line; will heal this 
scar that extends, yellow and blue and red and black, 
across the heart of Western Europe. 

It is a long scar — long and irregular. It begins at 
Nieuport, on the North Sea, extends south to the 
region of Soissons, east to Verdun, and then irregu- 
larly southeast to the Swiss border. 

The map from which I am working was coloured 
and marked for me by General Foch, commander of 
the French Army of the North, at his headquarters. 
It is a little map, and so this line, which crosses em- 
pires and cuts civilisation in half, is only fourteen 
inches long, although it represents a battle line of over 
four hundred miles. Of this the Belgian front is one- 
half inch, or approximately one-twenty-eighth. The 
British front is a trifle more than twice as long. All 
the rest of that line is red — French. 

That is the most impressive thing about the map, the 
length of the French line. 

With the arrival of Kitchener's army this last spring 1 



NO MAN'S LAND 89 

the blue portion grew somewhat. The yellow re- 
mained as it was, for the Belgian casualties have been 
two-thirds of her army. There have been many trag- 
edies in Belgium. That is one of them. 

In the very north then, yellow; then a bit of red; 
below that blue; then red again in that long sweep- 
ing curve that is the French front. Occasionally the 
line moves a trifle forward or back, like the shift- 
ing record of a fever chart; but in general it remains 
the same. It has remained the same since the first of 
November. A movement to thrust it forward in any 
one place is followed by a counter-attack in another 
place. The reserves must be drawn off and hurried 
to the threatened spot. Automatically the line straight- 
ens again. 

The little map is dated the twenty-third of Feb- 
ruary. All through the spring and summer the line 
has remained unchanged. There will be no change 
until one side or the other begins a great offensive 
movement. After that it will be a matter of the ir- 
resistible force and the immovable body, a question not 
of maps but of empires. 

Between the confronting lines lies that tragic strip 
of No Man's Land, which has been and is the scene 
of so much tragedy. No Man's Land is of fixed 
length but of varying width. There are places where 
it is very narrow, so narrow that it is possible to 
throw across a hand grenade or a box of cigarettes, 
depending on the nearness of an officer whose business 
is war. Again it is wide, so that friendly relations 
are impossible, and sniping becomes a pleasure as well 
as an art. 

It was No Man's Land that I was to visit the night 
of the entry in my journal. 



90 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

From the neighbourhood of Ypres to the Swiss bor- 
der No Man's Land varies. The swamps and flat 
ground give way to more rolling country, and this to 
hills. But in the north No Man's Land is a series of 
shallow lakes, lying in flat, unprotected country. 

For Belgium, in desperation, last October opened 
the sluices and let in the sea. It crept in steadily, each 
high tide advancing the flood farther. It followed 
the lines of canal and irrigation ditches mile after 
mile till it had got as far south as Ypres, beyond Ypres 
indeed. To the encroachment of the sea was added 
the flooding resulting from an abnormally rainy win- 
ter. Ordinarily the ditches have carried off the rain ; 
now even where the inundation does not reach it lies 
in great ponds. Belgium's fertile sugar-beet fields are 
under salt water. 

The method was effectual, during the winter, at 
least, in retarding the German advance. Their artil- 
lery destroyed the towns behind the opposing trenches 
of the Allies, but their attempts to advance through the 
flood failed. 

Even where the floods were shallow — only two feet 
or so — they served their purpose in masking the char- 
acter of the land. From a wading depth of two feet, 
charging soldiers stepped frequently into a deep ditch 
and drowned ignominiously. 

It is a noble thing, war ! It is good for a country ! 
It unites its people and develops national spirit! 

Great poems have been written about charges. Will 
there ever be any great poems about these men who 
have been drowned in ditches ? Or about the soldiers 
who have been caught in the barbed wire with which 
these inland lakes are filled? Or about the wounded 
who fall helpless into the flood? 



NO MAN'S LAND 91 

The inland lakes that ripple under the wind from 
the sea, or gleam silver in the light of the moon, are 
beautiful, hideous, filled with bodies that rise and 
float, face down. And yet here and there the situa- 
tion is not without a sort of grim humour. Brilliant 
engineers on one side or the other are experimenting 
with the flood. Occasionally trenches hitherto dry and 
fairly comfortable find themselves unexpectedly filling 
with water, as the other side devises some clever 
scheme for turning the flood from a menace into a 
military asset. 

In No Man's Land are the outposts. 

The fighting of the winter has mystified many non- 
combatants, with its advances and retreats, which have 
yet resulted in no definite change of the line. In 
many instances this sharp fighting has been a matter 
of outposts, generally farms, churches or other iso- 
lated buildings, sometimes even tiny villages. In the 
inundated portion of Belgium these outposts are build- 
ings which, situated on rather higher land, a foot or 
two above the flood, have become islands. Much of 
the fighting in the north has been about these island 
outposts. Under the conditions, charges must be made 
by relatively small bodies of men. The outposts can 
similarly house but few troops. 

They are generally defended by barbed wire and a 
few quick-firing guns. Their purpose is strategical; 
they are vantage points from which the enemy may 
be closely watched. They change sides frequently; 
are won and lost, and won again. 

Here and there the side at the time in command of 
the outpost builds out from its trenches through the 
flood a pathway of bags of earth, topped by fascines 
or bundles of fagots tied together. Such a path pays 



92 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

a tribute of many lives for every yard of advance. 
It is built under fire; it remains under fire. It is 
destroyed and reconstructed. 

When I reached the front the British, Belgian and 
French troops in the north had been fighting under 
these conditions for four months. My first visit to the 
trenches was made under the auspices of the Belgian 
Ministry of War. The start was made from the 
Mairie in Dunkirk, accompanied by the necessary 
passes and escorted by an attache of the Military 
Cabinet. 

I was taken in an automobile from Dunkirk to the 
Belgian Army Headquarters, where an officer of the 

headquarters staff, Captain F », took charge. The 

headquarters had been a brewery. 

Stripped of the impedimenta of its previous occu- 
pation, it now housed the officers of the staff. 

Since that time I have frequently visited the head- 
quarters staffs of various armies or their divisions. I 
became familiar with the long, bare tables stacked 
with papers, the lamps, the maps on the walls, the 
telephones, the coming and going of dispatch riders in 
black leather. I came to know something of the 
chafing restlessness of these men who must sit, well 
behind the firing line, and play paper battles on which 
lives and empires hang. 

But one thing never ceased to puzzle me. 
I That night, in a small kitchen behind the Belgian 
headquarters rooms, a French peasant woman was 
cooking the evening meal. Always, at all the head- 
quarters that were near the front, somewhere in a back 
room was a resigned-looking peasant woman cooking 
a meal. Children hung about the stove or stood in 
corners looking out at the strange new life that sur- 



NO MAN'S LAND 93 

rounded them. Peasants too old for war, their occu- 
pations gone, sat listlessly with hanging hands, their 
faces the faces of bewildered children; their clean 
floors were tracked by the muddy boots of soldiers; 
their orderly lives disturbed, uprooted ; their once tidy 
farmyards were filled with transports; their barns 
with army horses; their windmills, instead of housing 
sacks of grain, were occupied by mitrailleuses. 

What were the thoughts of these people? What 
are they thinking now? — for they are still there. 
What does it all mean to them ? Do they ever glance 
at the moving cord of the war map on the wall? Is 
this war to them only a matter of a courtyard or a 
windmill? Of mud and the upheaval of quiet lives? 
They appear to be waiting — for spring, probably, 
and the end of hostilities; for spring and the plant- 
ing of crops, for quiet nights to sleep and days to 
labour. 

The young men are always at the front. They who 
are left express confidence that these their sons and 
husbands will return. And yet in the spring many of 
them ploughed shallow over battlefields. 

It had been planned to show me first a detail map 
of the places I was to visit, and with this map before 
me to explain the present position of the Belgian line 
along the embankment of the railroad from Nieuport 
to Dixmude. The map was ready on a table in the 
officers' mess, a bare room with three long tables of 
planks, to which a flight of half a dozen steps led from 
the headquarters room below. 

Twilight had fallen by that time. It had com- 
menced to rain. I could see through the window 
heavy drops that stirred the green surface of the moat 
at one side of the old building. On the wall hung 



94 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

the advertisement of an American harvester, a remind- 
er of more peaceful days. The beating of the rain 

kept time to the story Captain F told that night, 

bending over the map and tracing his country's ruin 
with his forefinger. 

Much of it is already history. The surprise and 
Jury of the Germans on discovering that what they 
had considered a contemptible military force was suc- 
cessfully holding them back until the English and 
French Armies could get into the field ; the policy of 
systematic terrorism that followed this discovery; the 
unpreparedness of Belgium's allies, which left this 
heroic little army practically unsupported for so long 
against the German tidal wave. 

The great battle of the Yser is also history. I shall 
not repeat the dramatic recital of the Belgian retreat 
to this point, fighting a rear-guard engagement as they 
fell back before three times their number; of the fury 
of the German onslaught, which engaged the entire 
Belgian front, so that there was no rest, not a mo- 
ment's cessation. In one night at Dixmude the Ger- 
mands made fifteen attacks. Is it any wonder that 
two-thirds of Belgium's Army is gone? 

They had fought since the third of August. It was 
on the twenty-first of October that they at last retired 
across the Yser and two days later took up their pres- 
ent position at the railway embankment. On that day, 
the twenty-third of October, the first French troops 
arrived to assist them, some eighty-five hundred reach- 
ing Nieuport. 

It was the hope of the Belgians that, the French 
taking their places on the line, they could retire for a 
time as reserves and get a little rest. But the German 
attack continuing fiercely against the combined armies 



NO MAN'S LAND 95 

of the Allies, the Belgians were forced to go into 
action again, weary as they were, at the historic curve 
of the Yser, where was fought the great battle of the 
war. At British Headquarters later on I was given 
the casualties of that battle, when the invading Ger- 
man Army flung itself again and again, for nineteen 
days, against the forces of the Allies: The English 
casualties for that period were forty-five thousand ; the 
French, seventy thousand; the German, by figures 
given out at Berlin, two hundred and fifty thousand. 
The Belgian I do not know. 

"It was after that battle," said Captain F , 

"that the German dead were taken back and burned, 
to avoid pestilence." 

The Belgians had by this time reached the limit of 
their resources. It was then that the sluices were 
opened and their fertile lowlands flooded. 

On the thirty-first of October the water stopped the 
German advance along the Belgian lines. As soon as 
they discovered what had been done the Germans made 
terrific and furious efforts to get forward ahead of it. 
They got into the towns of Ramscappelle and Pervyse, 
where furious street fighting occurred. 

Pervyse was taken five times and lost five times. 
But all their efforts failed. The remnant of the Bel- 
gian Army had retired to the railroad embankment. 
The English and French lines held firm. 

For the time, at least, the German advance was 
checked. 

That was Captain F — ■ — 's story of the battle of 
the Yser. 

When he had finished he drew out of his pocket the 
diary of a German officer killed at the Yser during 
the first days of the fighting, and read it aloud. It is 



96 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

a great human document. I give here as nearly as pos- 
sible a literal translation. 

It was written during the first days of the great 
battle. For fifteen days after he was killed the Ger- 
man offensive kept up. General Foch, who com- 
manded the French Army of the North during that 
time, described their method to me. "The Germans 
came," he said, "like the waves of the sea !" 

The diary of a German officer, killed at the Yser : — 
Twenty- fourth of October, 1914: 

"The battle goes on — we are trying to effect a cross- 
ing of the Yser. Beginnin'g at 5 145 p.m. the engineers 
go on preparing their bridging materials. Marching 
quickly over the country, crossing fields and ditches, 
we are exposed to continuous heavy fire. A spent 
bullet strikes me in the back, just below the coat col- 
lar, but I am not wounded. 

"Taking up a position near Vandewonde farm, we 
are able to obtain a little shelter from the devastating 
fire of the enemy's artillery. How terrible is our 
situation ! By taking advantage of all available cover 
we arrive at the fifth trench, where the artillery is in 
action and rifle fire is incessant. We know nothing of 
the general situation. I do not know where the enemy 
is, or what numbers are opposed to us, and there seems 
no way of getting the desired information. 

"Everywhere along the line we are suffering heavy 
losses, altogether out of proportion to the results 
obtained. The enemy's artillery is too well sheltered, 
too strong; and as our own guns, fewer in number, 
have not been able to silence those of the enemy, our 



NO MANS LAND 97 

infantry is unable to make any advance. We are suf- 
fering heavy and useless losses. 

"The medical service on the field has been found 
very wanting. At Dixmude, in one place, no less than 
forty frightfully wounded men were left lying uncared 
for. The medical corps is kept back on the other side 
of the Yser without necessity. It is equally impossible 
to receive water and rations in any regular way. 

"For several days now we have not tasted a warm 
meal ; bread and other things are lacking ; our reserve 
rations are exhausted. The water is bad, quite green, 
indeed; but all the same we drink it — we can get 
nothing else. Man is brought down to the level of 
the brute beast. Myself, I have nothing left to eat; 
I left what I had with me in the saddlebags on my 
horse. In fact, we were not told what we should 
have to do on this side of the Yser, and we did not 
know that our horses would have to be left on the 
other side. That is why we could not arrange things. 

"I am living on what other people, like true com- 
rades, are willing to give me, but even then my share 
is only very small. There is no thought of changing 
our linen or our clothes in any way. It is an incredi- 
ble situation! On every hand farms and villages are 
burning. How sad a spectacle, indeed, to see this mag- 
nificent region all in ruins, wounded and dead lying 
everywhere all round." 

Twenty-fifth of October, 1914: 

"A relatively undisturbed night. The safety of the 
bridge over the Yser has been assured for a time. The 
battle has gone on the whole day long. We have not 
been given any definite orders. One would not think 



98 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

this is Sunday. The infantry and artillery combat is 
incessant, but no definite result is achieved. Nothing 
but losses in wounded and killed. We shall try to get 
into touch with the sixth division of the Third Reserve 
Army Corps on our right." 

Twenty-sixth of October, 1914: 

"What a frightful night has gone by ! There was a 
terrible rainstorm. I felt frozen. I remained stand- 
ing knee-deep in water. To-day an uninterrupted 
fusillade meets us in front. We shall throw a bridge 
across the Yser, for the enemy's artillery has again 
destroyed one we had previously constructed. 

"The situation is practically unchanged. No prog- 
ress has been made in spite of incessant fighting, in 
spite of the barking of the guns and the cries of alarm 
of those human beings so uselessly killed. The infan- 
try is worthless until our artillery has silenced the 
enemy's guns. Everywhere we must be losing heavily ; 
our own company has suffered greatly so far. The 
colonel, the major, and, indeed, many other officers are 
already wounded; several are dead. 

"There has not yet been any chance of taking off 
our boots and washing ourselves. The Sixth Division 
is ready, but its help is insufficient. The situation is 
no clearer than before; we can learn nothing of what 
is going on. Again we are setting off for wet trenches. 
Our regiment is mixed up with other regiments in an 
inextricable fashion. No battalion, no company, 
knows anything about where the other units of the 
regiment are to be found. Everything is jumbled 
under this terrible fire which enfilades from all sides. 

"There are numbers of francs-tireurs. Our second 



NO MAN'S LAND 99 

battalion is going to be placed under the order of the 
Cyckortz Regiment, made up of quite diverse units. 
Our old regiment is totally broken up. The situation 
is terrible. To be under a hail of shot and shell, 
without any respite, and know nothing whatever of 
one's own troops ! 

"It is to be hoped that soon the situation will be 
improved. These conditions cannot be borne very 
much longer. I am hopeless. The battalion is under 
the command of Captain May, and I am reduced to 
acting as Fourier. It is not at all an easy thing to 
do in our present frightful situation. In the black 
night soldiers must be sent some distance in order to 
get and bring back the food so much needed by their 
comrades. They have brought back, too, cards and 
letters from those we love. What a consolation in 
our cheerless situation ! We cannot have a light, how- 
ever, so we are forced to put into our pockets, unread, 
the words of comfort sent by our dear ones — we have 
to wait till the following morning. 

"So we spend the night again on straw, huddled 
up close one to another in order to keep warm. It is 
horribly cold and damp. All at once a violent rattle 
of rifle fire raises us for the combat; hastily we get 
ready, shivering, almost frozen. " 

Twenty-seventh of October, 1914: 

"At dawn I take advantage of a few moments' res- 
pite to read over the kind wishes which have come 
from home. What happiness! Soon, however, the 
illusion leaves me. The situation here is still all con- 
fusion; we cannot think of advancing — — " 

The last sentence is a broken one. For he died. 



ioo KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

Morning came and he read his letters from home. 
They cheered him a little; we can be glad of that, at 
least. And then he died. 

That record is a great human document. It is 
absolutely genuine. He was starving and cold. As 
fast as they built a bridge to get back it was destroyed. 
From three sides he and the others with him were 
being shelled. He must have known what the inev- 
itable end would be. But he said very little. And 
then he died. 

There were other journels taken from the bodies of 
other German officers at that terrible battle of the 
Yser. They speak of it as a "hell" — a place of tor- 
ment and agony impossible to describe. Some of 
them I have seen. There is nowhere in the world a 
more pitiful or tragic or thought-compelling literature 
than these diaries of German officers thrust forward 
without hope and waiting for the end. 

At six o'clock it was already entirely dark and rain- 
ing hard. Even in the little town the machine was 
deep in mud. I got in and we started off again, mov- 
ing steadily toward the front. Captain F had 

brought with him a box of biscuits, large, square, flaky 
crackers, which were to be my dinner until some time 
in the night. He had an electric flash and a map. 
The roads were horrible; it was impossible to move 
rapidly. Here and there a sentry's lantern would show 
him standing on the edge of a flooded field. The car 
careened, righted itself and kept on. As the roads 
became narrower it was impossible to pass another 
vehicle. The car drew out at crossroads here and 
there to allow transports to get by. 



CHAPTER X 
THE IRON DIVISION 



IT was bitterly cold, and the dead officer's diary 
weighed on my spirit. The two officers in the 
machine pored over the map ; I sat huddled in my cor- 
ner. I had come a long distance to do the thing I was 
doing. But my enthusiasm for it had died. I wished 
I had not heard the diary. 

"At dawn I take advantage of a few moments' 
respite to read over the kind wishes which have come 
from home. What happiness !" And then he died. 

The car jolted on. 

The soldier and the military chauffeur out in front 
were drenched. The wind hurled the rain at them 
like bullets. We were getting close to the front. 
There were shellholes now, great ruts into which the 
car dropped and pulled out again with a jerk. 

Then at last a huddle of dark houses and a sentry's 
challenge. The car stopped and we got out. Again 
there were seas of mud, deeper even than before. I 
had reached the headquarters of the Third Division 
of the Belgian Army, commonly known as the Iron 
Division, so nicknamed for its heroic work in this war. 

The headquarters building was ironically called the 
"chateau." It had been built by officers and men, of 
fresh boards and lined neatly inside with newspapers. 
Some of them were illustrated French papers. It had 

IOI 



102 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

much the appearance of a Western shack during the 
early days of the gold fever. On one of the walls was 
a war map of the Eastern front, the line a cord fas- 
tened into place with flag pins. The last time I had 
seen such a map of the Eastern front was in the 
Cabinet Room at Washington. 

A large stove in the centre of the room heated the 
building, which was both light and warm. Some fif- 
teen officers received us. I was the only woman who 
had been so near the front, for out here there are no 
nurses. One by one they were introduced and bowed. 
There were fifteen hosts and extremely few guests! 

Having had telephone notice of our arrival, they 
showed me how carefully they had prepared for it. 
The long desk was in beautiful order; floors gleamed 
snow white ; the lamp chimneys were polished. There 
were sandwiches and tea ready to be served. 

In one room was the telephone exchange, which 
connected the headquarters with every part of the line. 
In another, a long line of American typewriters and 
mimeographing machines wrote out and copied the 
orders which were regularly distributed to the front. 

"Will you see our museum ?" said a tall officer, who 
spoke beautiful English. His mother was an English- 
woman. So I was taken into another room and shown 
various relics of the battlefield — pieces of shells, rifles' 
and bullets. 

"Early German shells," said the officer who spoke 
English, "were like this. You see how finely they 
splintered. The later ones are not so good; the ma- 
terial is inferior, and here is an aluminum nose which 
shows how scarce copper is becoming in Germany to- 
day." 

I have often thought of that visit to the "chateau," 



THE IRON DIVISION 103 

of the beautiful courtesy of those Belgian officers, their 
hospitality, their eagerness to make an American 
woman comfortable and at home. And I was to have 
still further proof of their kindly feeling, for when 
toward daylight I came back from the trenches they 
were still up, the lamps were still burning brightly, 
the stove was red hot and cheerful, and they had pro- 
vided food for us against the chill of the winter 
dawn. Out through the mud and into the machine 
again. And now we were very near the trenches. The 
car went without lights and slowly. A foot off the 
centre of the road would have made an end to the 
excursion. 

We began to pass men, long lines of them standing 
in the drenching rain to let us by. They crowded 
close against the car to avoid the seas of mud. Some- 
times they grumbled a little, but mostly they were 
entirely silent. That is the thing that impressed me 
always about the lines of soldiers I saw going to and 
from the trenches — their silence. Even their feet 
made no noise. They loomed up like black shadows 
which the night swallowed immediately. 

The car stopped again. We had made another leg 
of the journey. And this time our destination was a 
church. We were close behind the trenches now and 
our movements were made with extreme caution. Cap- 
tain F piloted me through the mud. 

"We will go quietly," he said. "Many of them are 
doubtless sleeping; they are but just out of the 
trenches and very tired." 

Now and then one encounters in this war a picture 
that cannot be painted. Such a picture is that little 

church just behind the Belgian lines at L . There 

are no pews, of course, in Continental churches. 



104 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

The chairs had been piled up in a corner near the 
altar, and on the stone floor thus left vacant had been 
spread quantities of straw. Lying on the straw and 
covered by their overcoats were perhaps two hundred 
Belgian soldiers. They lay huddled close together 
for warmth; the mud of the trenches still clung to 
them. The air was heavy with the odour of damp 
straw. 

The high vaulted room was a cave of darkness. 
The only lights were small flat candles here and there, 
stuck in saucers or on haversacks just above the straw. 
These low lights, so close to the floor, fell on the weary 
faces of sleeping men, accentuating the shadows, 
bringing pinched nostrils into relief, showing lines of 
utter fatigue and exhaustion. 

But the picture was not all sombre. Here were four 
men playing cards under an image of Our Lady, 
which was just overhead. They were muffled against 
the cold and speaking in whispers. In a far corner a 
soldier sat alone, cross-legged, writing by the light of 
a candle. His letter rested on a flat loaf of bread, 
which was his writing table. Another soldier had 
taken a loaf of bread for his pillow and was com- 
fortably asleep on it. 

Captain F led the way through the church. 

He stepped over the men carefully. When they roused 
and looked up they would have risen to salute, but he 
told them to lie still. 

It was clear that the relationship between the Bel- 
gian officers and their troops was most friendly. Not 
only in that little church at midnight, but again and 
again I have seen the same thing. The officers call 
their men their "little soldiers," and eye them with' 
affection. 



THE IRON DIVISION 105 

One boy insisted on rising and saluting. He was 
very young, and on his chin was the straggly beard 
of his years. The Captain stooped, and lifting a 
candle held it to his face. 

"The handsomest beard in the Belgian Army!" he 
said, and the men round chuckled. 

And so it went, a word here, a nod there, an apology 
when we disturbed one of the sleepers. 

"They are but boys," said the Captain, and sighed. 
For each day there were fewer of them who returned 
to the little church to sleep. 

On the way back to the car, making our way by 
means of the Captain's electric flash through the 
crowded graveyard, he turned to me. 

"When you write of this, madame," he said, "you 
will please not mention the location of this church. 
So far it has escaped — perhaps because it is small. 
But the churches always suffer." 

I regretted this. So many of the churches are old 
and have the interest of extreme age, even when they 
are architecturally insignificant. But I found these 
officers very fair, just as I had found the King of the 
Belgians disinclined to condemn the entire German 
Army for the brutalities of a part of it. 

"There is no reason why churches should not be 
destroyed if they are serving military purposes," one 
of them said. "When a church tower shelters a gun, 
or is used for observations, it is quite legitimate that 
it be subject to artillery fire. That is a necessity of 
war." 

We moved cautiously. Behind the church was a 
tiny cluster of small houses. The rain had ceased, but 
the electric flashlight showed great pools of water, 
through which we were obliged to walk. The hamlet 



106 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

was very silent — not a dog barked. There were no 
dogs. 

I do not recall seeing any dogs at any time along 
the front, except at La Panne. What has become of 
them? There were cats in the destroyed towns, cats 
even in the trenches. But there were no dogs. It is 
not because the people are not fond of dogs. Dunkirk 
was full of them when I was there. The public square 
resounded with their quarrels and noisy playing. 
They lay there in the sun and slept, and ambulances 
turned aside in their headlong career to avoid running 
them down. But the villages along the front were 
silent. 

I once asked an officer what had become of the dogs. 

"The soldiers eat them!" he said soberly. 

I heard the real explanation later. The strongest 
dogs had been commandeered for the army, and 
these brave dogs of Flanders, who have always la- 
boured, are now drawing mitrailleuses, as I saw them 

at L . The little dogs must be fed, and there is 

no food to spare. And so the children, over whose 
heads passes unheeded the real significance of this 
drama that is playing about them, have their own small 
tragedies these days. 

We got into the car again and it moved off. With 
every revolution of the engine we were advancing 
toward that sinister line that borders No Man's Land. 
We were very close. The road paralleled the trenches, 
and shelling had begun again. 

It was not close, and no shells dropped in our vicin- 
ity. But the low, horizontal red streaks of the Ger- 
man guns were plainly visible. 

With the cessation of the rain had begun again the 
throwing over the Belgian trenches of the German 



THE IRON DIVISION 107 

magnesium flares, which the British call starlights. 
The French call them fusees. Under any name I do 
not like them. One moment one is advancing in a 
cpmfortable obscurity. The next instant it is the 
fourth of July, with a white rocket bursting over- 
head. There is no noise, however. The thing is 
miraculously beautiful, silent and horrible. I believe 
the light floats on a sort of tiny parachute. For per- 
haps sixty seconds it hangs low in the air, throwing 
all the flat landscape into clear relief. 

I do not know if one may read print under these 
fusees. I never had either the courage or the print 
for the experiment. But these eyes of the night open 
and close silently all through the hours of darkness. 
They hang over the trenches, reveal the movements 
of troops on the roads behind, shine on ammunition 
trains and ambulances, on the righteous and the un- 
righteous. All along the German lines these fusees 
go up steadily. I have seen a dozen in the air at 
once. Their silence and the eternal vigilance which 
they reveal are most impressive. On the quietest 
night, with only an occasional shot being fired, the 
horizon is ringed with them. 

And on the horizon they are beautiful. Overhead 
they are distinctly unpleasant. 

"They are very uncomfortable," I said to Captain 

F . "The Germans can see us plainly, can't 

they?" 

"But that is what they are for," he explained. "All 
movements of troops and ammunition trains to and 
from the trenches are made during the night, so they 
watch us very carefully." 

"How near are we to the trenches?" I asked. 

"Very near, indeed." 



108 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

"To the first liner* 

For I had heard that there were other lines behind, 
and with the cessation of the rain my courage was 
rising. Nothing less than the first line was to satisfy 
me. 

"To the first line," he said, and smiled. 

The wind which had driven the rain in sheets 
against the car had blown the storm away. The moon 
came out, a full moon. From the car I could see here 
and there the gleam of the inundation. The road was 
increasingly bad, with shell holes everywhere. Build- 
ings loomed out of the night, roofless and destroyed. 
The fusees rose and burst silently overhead ; the entire 
horizon seemed encircled with them. We were so 
close to the German lines that we could see an electric 
signal sending its message of long and short flashes, 
could even see the reply. It seemed to me most un- 
military. 

"Any one who knew telegraphy and German could 
read that message," I protested. 

"It is not so simple as that. It is a cipher code, 
and is probably changed daily." 

Nevertheless, the officers in the car watched the 
signalling closely, and turning, surveyed the country 
behind us. In so flat a region, with trees and shrub- 
bery cut down and houses razed, even a pocket flash 
can send a signal to the lines of the enemy. And such 
signals are sent. The German spy system is thorough 
and far-reaching. 

I have gone through Flanders near the lines at 
various times at night. It is a dead country appar- 
ently. There are destroyed houses, sodden fields, 
ditches lipful of water. But in the most amazing 
fashion lights spring up and disappear. Follow one 



THE IRON DIVISION 100 



of these lights and you find nothing but a deserted 
farm, or a ruined barn, or perhaps nothing but a field 
of sugar beets dying in the ground. 

Who are these spies? Are they Belgians and 
French, driven by the ruin of everything they possess 
to selling out to the enemy ? I think not. It is much 
more probable that they are Germans who slip through 
the lines in some uncanny fashion, wading and swim- 
ming across the inundation, crawling flat where neces- 
sary, and working, an inch at a time, toward the 
openings between the trenches. Frightful work, of 
course. Impossible work, too, if the popular idea of 
the trenches were correct — that is, that they form 
one long, communicating ditch from the North Sea 
to Switzerland ! They do not, of course. There are 
blank spaces here and there, fully controlled by the 
trenches on either side, and reenforced by further 
trenches behind. But with a knowledge of where 
these openings lie it is possible to work through. 

Possible, not easy. And there is no mercy for a 
captured spy. 

The troops who had been relieved were moving out 
of the trenches. Our progress became extremely 
slow. The road was lined with men. They pressed 
their faces close to the glass of the car and laughed 
and talked a little among themselves. Some of them 
were bandaged. Their white bandages gleamed in 
the moonlight. Here and there, as they passed, one 
blew on his fingers, for the wind was bitterly cold. 

"In a few moments we must get out and walk," I 
was told. "Is madame a good walker?" 

I said I was a good walker. I had a strong feeling 
that two or three people might walk along that road 
under those starlights much more safely and incon- 



ne> KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

spicuously than an automobile could move. For auto- 
mobiles at the front mean generals as a rule, and are 
always subject to attack. 

Suddenly the car stopped and a voice called to us 
sharply. There were soldiers coming up a side road. 
I was convinced that we had surprised an attack, and 
were in the midst of the German advance. One of 
the officers flung the door open and looked out. 

But we were only on the wrong road, and must get 
into reverse and turn the machine even closer to the I 
front. I know now that there was no chance of a 
German attack at that point, that my fears were : 
absurd. Nevertheless, so keen was the tension that 
for quite ten minutes my heart raced madly. 

On again. The officers in the car consulted the 
map and, having decided on the route, fell into con- 
versation. The officer of the Third Division, whose 
mother had been English, had joined the party. He i 
had been on the staff of General Leman at the time 
of the capture of Liege, and he told me of the sensa- 
tional attempt made by the Germans to capture the 
General. 

"I was upstairs with him at headquarters, ,, he said, 
"when word came up that eight Englishmen had just 
entered the building with a request to see him. I was 
suspicious and we started down the staircase together. 
The 'Englishmen' were in the hallway below. As we 
appeared on the stairs the man in advance put his 
hand in his pocket and drew a revolver. They were 
dressed in civilians' clothes, but I saw at once that 
they were German. 

"I was fortunate in getting my revolver out first, 
and shot down the man in advance. There was a 
struggle, in which the General made his escape and all 



THE IRON DIVISION in 

of the eight were either killed or taken prisoners. 
They were uhlans, two officers and six privates. ,, 

"It was very brave," I said. "A remarkable ex- 
ploit." 

"Very brave indeed," he agreed with me. "They 
are all very brave, the Germans." 

Captain F had been again consulting his map. 

Now he put it away. 

"Brave but brutal," he said briefly. "I am of the 
Third Division. I have watched the German advance 
protected by women and children. In the fighting the 
civilians fell first. They had no weapons. It was 
terrible. It is the German system," he went on, "which 
makes everything of the end, and nothing at all of the 
means. It is seen in the way they have sacrificed their 
own troops." 

"They think you are equally brutal," I said. "The 
German soldiers believe that they will have their eyes 
torn out if they are captured." 

I cited a case I knew of, where a wounded German 
had hidden in the inundation for five days rather than 
surrender to the horrors he thought were waiting for 
him. When he was found and taken to a hospital his 
long days in the water had brought on gangrene and 
he could not be saved. 

"They have been told that to make them fight more 
savagely," was the comment. "What about the official 
German order for a campaign of ^rightfulness' in 
Belgium?" 

And here, even while the car is crawling along to- 
ward the trenches, perhaps it is allowable to explain 
the word "f rightfulness," which now so permeates the 
literature of the war. Following the scenes of the 
German invasion into Belgium, where here and there 



112 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

some maddened civilian fired on the German troops 
and precipitated the deaths of his townsmen,* Berlin 
issued, on August twenty-seventh, a declaration, of 
which this paragraph is a part : 

"The only means of preventing surprise attacks 
from the civil population has been to interfere with 
unrelenting severity and to create examples which, by 
their frightfulness, would be a warning to the whole 
country." 

A Belgian officer once quoted it to me, with a com- 
ment. 

"This is not an order to the army. It is an attempt 
at justification for the very acts which Berlin is now 
attempting to deny!" 

That is how "frightfulness" came into the literature 
of the war. 

Captain F stopped the car. Near the road was 

a ruin of an old church. 

"In that church," he said, "our soldiers were sleep- 
ing when the Germans, evidently informed by a spy, 
began to shell it. The first shot smashed that house 
there, twenty-five yards away; the second shot came 
through the roof and struck one of the supporting 
pillars, bringing the roof down. Forty-six men were 
killed and one hundred and nine wounded." 

He showed me the grave from a window of the 
car, a great grave in front of the church, with a wood- 
en cross on it. It was too dark to read the inscription, 
but he told me what it said : 

"Here lie forty-six chasseurs." Beneath are the 
names, one below the other in two columns, and under- 
neath all : "Morts pour la Patrie" 

* The Belgians contend that, in almost every case, such firing 
by civilians was the result of attack on their women. 



THE IRON DIVISION 113 

We continued to advance. Our lamps were out, but 
the fusees made progress easy. And there was the 
moon. We had left behind us the lines of the silent 
men. The scene was empty, desolate. Suddenly we 
stopped by a low brick house, a one-story building with 
overhanging eaves. Sentries with carbines stood under 
the eaves, flattened against the wall for shelter from 
the biting wind. 



CHAPTER XI 
AT THE HOUSE OF THE BARRIER 



A NARROW path led up to the house. It was 
-*- ^ flanked on both sides by barbed wire, and 
progress through it was slow. The wind caught my 
rain cape and tore it against the barbs. I had to be 
disentangled. The sentries saluted, and the low door, 
through which the officers were obliged to stoop to 
enter, was opened by an orderly from within. 

We entered The House of the Mill of Saint . 

The House of the Mill of Saint was less pre- 
tentious than its name. Even at its best it could not 
have been imposing. Now, partially destroyed and 
with its windows carefully screened inside by grain 
sacks nailed to the frames for fear of a betraying ray 
of light, it was not beautiful. But it was hospitable. 
A hanging lamp in its one livable room, a great iron 
stove, red and comforting, and a large round table 
under the lamp made it habitable and inviting. It 
was Belgian artillery headquarters, and I was to meet 
here Colonel Jacques, one of the military idols of Bel- 
gium, the hero of the Congo, and now in charge of 
Belgian batteries. In addition, since it was midnight, 
we were to sup here. 

We were expected, and Colonel Jacques himself 
waited inside the living-room door. A tall man, as 
are almost all the Belgian officers — which is curious, 

114 



AT THE HOUSE OF THE BARRIER 115 

considering that the troops seem to be rather under 
average size — he greeted us cordially. I fancied that 
behind his urbanity there was the glimmer of an 
amused smile. But his courtesy was beautiful. He 
put me near the fire and took the next chair himself. 

I had a good chance to observe him. He is no 
longer a young man, and beyond a certain military 
erectness and precision in his movements there is noth- 
ing to mark him the great soldier he has shown him- 
self to be. 

"We are to have supper," he said smilingly in 
French. "Provided you have brought something to 
eat with you!" 

"We have brought it," said Captain F . 

The officers of the staff came in and were formally 
presented. There was much clicking of heels, much 
deep and courteous bowing. Then Captain F 1 pro- 
duced his box of biscuits, and from a capacious pocket 
of his army overcoat a tin of bully beef. The House 

of the Mill of Saint contributed a bottle of thin 

white native wine and, triumphantly, a glass. There 
are not many glasses along the front. 

There was cheese too. And at the end of the meal 
Colonel Jacques, with great empressement, laid before 
me a cake of sweet chocolate. 

I had to be shown the way to use the bully beef. 
One of the hard flat biscuits was split open, spread 
with butter and then with the beef in a deep layer. It 
was quite good, but what with excitement and fatigue 
I was not hungry. Everybody ate ; everybody talked ; 
and, after asking my permission, everybody smoked. I 
sat near the stove and dried my steaming boots. 

Afterward I remembered that with all the conver- 
sation there was very little noise. Our voices were 



n6 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

subdued. Probably we might have cheered in that 
closed and barricaded house without danger. But the 
sense of the nearness of the enemy was over us all, 
and the business of war was not forgotten. There 
were men who came, took orders and went away. 
There were maps on the walls and weapons in every 
corner. Even the sacking that covered the windows 
bespoke caution and danger. 

Here it was too near the front for the usual peasant 
family huddled round its stove in the kitchen, and 
looking with resignation on these strange occupants of 
their house. The humble farm buildings outside were 
destroyed. 

I looked round the room ; a picture or two still hung 
on the walls, and a crucifix. There is always a crucifix 
in these houses. There was a carbine just beneath this 
one. 

Inside of one of the picture frames one of the Colo- 
nel's medals had been placed, as if for safety. 

Colonel Jacques sat at the head of the table and 
beamed at us all. He has behind him many years of 
military service. He has been decorated again and 
again for bravery. But, perhaps, when this war is 
over and he has time to look back he will smile over 
that night supper with the first woman he had seen for 
months, under the rumble of his own and the German 
batteries. 

It was time to go to the advance trenches. But be- 
fore we left one of the officers who had accompanied 
me rose and took a folded paper from a pocket of his 
tunic. He was smiling. 

"I shall read," he said, "a little tribute from one of 
Colonel Jacques' soldiers to him." 

So we listened. Colonel Jacques sat and smiled; 



AT THE HOUSE OF THE BARRIER 117 

but he is a modest man, and his fingers were beating a 
nervous tattoo on the table. The young officer stood 
and read, glancing up now and then to smile at his 
chief's embarrassment. The wind howled outside, 
setting the sacks at the windows to vibrating. 
This is a part of the poem : 

/// 

"Comme chef nous avons Vhomme a la hauteur 
Un homme aimS et adore de tous 
L' Colonel Jacques; de ltd les hommes sont fous 
En ltd nous voyons Vembleme de Vhonneur. 
Des campagnes il en a des tas: En Afrique 
Haecht et Dixmude, Ramsdonck et Sart-Tilmau 
Et toujours premier et toujours en avant 
Toujours en tef de son beau regiment, 

Toujours railleur 

Chef au grand ca?ur. 

REFRAIN 
"L'Colo du I2me passe 
Regarded ce vaillant 
Quand il crie dans Ve space 
Joy ens' ment 'En avant!' 
Ses hommes, la mine heurcuse 
Gaiment suivent sa trace 
Sur la route glorieuse. 
Saluez-le, VColo du I2me passe. 

"AD. DAUVISTER, 

"Sous-Lieutenant." 

We applauded. It is curious to remember how 
cheerful we were, how warm and comfortable, there 



n8 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

at the House of the Mill of Saint , with war only 

a step away now. Curious, until we think that, of 
all the created world, man is the most adaptable. Men 
and horses ! Which is as it should be now, with botH 
men and horses finding themselves in strange places, 
indeed, and somehow making the best of it. 

The copy of the poem, which had been printed at 
the front, probably on an American hand press, was 
given to me with Colonel Jacques' signature on the 
back, and we prepared to go. There was much don- 
ning of heavy wraps, much bowing and handshaking. 
Colonel Jacques saw us out into the wind-swept night. 
Then the door of the little house closed again, and we 
were on our way through the barricade. 

Until now our excursion to the trenches, aside from 
the discomfort of the weather and the mud, had been 
fairly safe, although there was always the chance of a 
shell. To that now was to be added a fresh hazard — 
the sniping that goes on all night long. 

Our car moved quietly for a mile, paralleling the 
trenches. Then it stopped. The rest of the journey 
was to be on foot. 

All traces of the storm had passed, except for the 
pools of mud, which, gleaming like small lakes, filled 
shell holes in the road. An ammunition lorry had 
drawn up in the shadow of a hedge and was cau- 
tiously unloading. Evidently the night's movement of 
troops was over, for the roads were empty. 

A few feet beyond the lorry we came up to the 
trenches. We were behind them, only head and shoul- 
ders above. 

There was no sign of life or movement, except for 
the silent f usees that burst occasionally a little to our 
right. Walking was bad. The Belgian blocks of the 



AT THE HOUSE OF THE BARRIER 119 

road were coated with slippery mud, and from long 
use and erosion the stones themselves were rounded, 
so that our feet slipped over them. At the right was 
a shallow ditch three or four feet wide. Immediately 
beyond that was the railway embankment where, as 

Captain F had explained, the Belgian Army had 

taken up its position after being driven back across 
the Yser. 

The embankment loomed shoulder high, and between 
it and the ditch were the trenches. There was no sound 
from them, but sentries halted us frequently. On such 
occasions the party stopped abruptly — for here sentries 
are apt to fire first and investigate afterward — and one 
officer advanced with the password. 

There is always something grim and menacing about 
the attitude of the sentry as he waits on such occasions. 
His carbine is not over his shoulder, but in his hands, 
ready for use. The bayonet gleams. His eyes are 
fixed watchfully on the advance. A false move, and 
his overstrained nerves may send the carbine to his 
shoulder. 

We walked just behind the trenches in the moon- 
light for a mile. No one said anything. The wind 
was icy. Across the railroad embankment it chopped 
the inundation into small crested waves. Only by 
putting one's head down was it possible to battle ahead. 
From Dixmude came the intermittent red flashes of 
guns. But the trenches beside us were entirely silent. 

At the end of a mile we stopped. The road turned 
abruptly to the right and crossed the railroad embank- 
ment, and at this crossing was the ruin of what had 
been the House of the Barrier, where in peaceful times 
the crossing tender lived. 

It had been almost destroyed. The side toward the 



120 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

German lines was indeed a ruin, but one room was 
fairly whole. However, the door had been shot away. 
To enter, it was necessary to lift away an extemporised 
one of planks roughly nailed together, which leaned 
against the aperture. 

The moving of the door showed more firelight, and 
a very small, shaded and smoky lamp on a stand. 
There were officers here again. The little house is 
slightly in front of the advanced trenches, and once 
inside it was possible to realise its exposed position. 
Standing'as it does on the elevation of the railroad, it is 
constantly under fire. It is surrounded by barbed wire 
and flanked by trenches in which are mitrailleuses. 

The walls were full of shell holes, stuffed with sacks 
of straw or boarded over. What had been windows 
were now jagged openings, similarly closed. The wind 
came through steadily, smoking the chimney of the 
lamp and making the flame flicker. 

There was one chair. 

I wish I could go farther. I wish I could say that 
shells were bursting overhead, and that I sat calmly 
in the one chair and made notes. I sat, true enough, 
but I sat because I was tired and my feet were wet. 
And instead of making notes I examined my new six- 
guinea silk rubber rain cape for barbed-wire tears. Not 
a shell came near. The German battery across had 
ceased firing at dusk that evening, and was playing 
pinochle four hundred yards away across the inunda- 
tion. The snipers were writing letters home. 

It is true that any time an artilleryman might lose 
a game and go out and fire a gun to vent his spleen 
or to keep his hand in. And the snipers might begin 
to notice that the rain was over, and that there was 
suspicious activity at the House of the Barrier. And, 



AT THE HOUSE OF THE BARRIER 121 

to take away the impression of perfect peace, big guns 
were busy just north and south of us. Also, just 
where we were the Germans had made a terrific charge 
three nights before to capture an outpost. But the fact 
remains that I brought away not even a bullet hole 
through the crown of my soft felt hat. 



CHAPTER XII 
NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 



WHEN I had been thawed out they took me into 
the trenches. Because of the inundation di- 
rectly in front, they are rather shallow, and at this 
point were built against the railroad embankment with 
earth, boards, and here and there a steel rail from the 
track. Some of them were covered, too, but not with 
bombproof material. The tops were merely shelters 
from the rain and biting wind. 

The men lay or sat in them — it was impossible to 
stand. Some of them were like tiny houses into which 
the men crawled from the rear, and by placing a board, 
which served as a door, managed to keep out at least 
a part of the bitter wind. 

In the first trench I was presented to a bearded 
major. He was lying flat and apologised for not be- 
ing able to rise. There was a machine gun beside him. 
He told me with some pride that it was an American 
gun, and that it never jammed. When a machine 
gun jams the man in charge of it dies and his com- 
rades die, and things happen with great rapidity. On 
the other side of him was a cat, curled up and sound 
asleep. There was a telephone instrument there. It 
was necessary to step over the wire that was stretched 
along the ground. 

All night long he lies there with his gun, watching 

122 



NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 123 

for the first movement in the trenches across. For 
here, at the House of the Barrier, has taken place some 
of the most furious fighting of this part of the line. 

In the next division of the trench were three men. 
They were cleaning and oiling their rifles round a 
candle. 

The surprise of all of these men at seeing a woman 
was almost absurd. Word went down the trenches 
that a woman was visiting. Heads popped out and 
cautious comments were made. It was concluded that 
I was visiting royalty, but the excitement died when 
it was discovered that I was not the Queen. Now and 
then, when a trench looked clean and dry, I was in- 
vited in. It was necessary to get down and crawl in 
on hands and knees. 

Here was a man warming his hands over a tiny 
fire kindled in a tin pail. He had bored holes in 
the bottom of the pail for air, and was shielding the 
glow carefully with his overcoat. 

Many people have written about the trenches — the 
mud, the odours, the inhumanity of compelling men to 
live under such foul conditions. Nothing that they 
have said can be too strong. Under the best condi- 
tions the life is ghastly, horrible, impossible. 

That night, when from a semi-shielded position I 
could look across to the German line, the contrast be- 
tween the condition of the men in the trenches and the 
beauty of the scenery was appalling. In each direction, 
as far as one could see, lay a gleaming lagoon of 
water. The moon made a silver path across it, and 
here and there on its borders were broken and twisted 
winter trees. 

"It is beautiful," said Captain F , beside me, 

in a low voice. "But it is full of the dead. They are 



124 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

taken out whenever it is possible; but it is not often 
possible.'' 

"And when there is an attack the attacking side 
must go through the water ?" 

"Not always, but in many places." 

"What will happen if it freezes over?" 

He explained that it was salt water, and would not 
freeze easily. And the cold of that part of the country 
is not the cold of America in the same latitude. It is 
not a cold of low temperature ; it is a damp, penetrating 
cold that goes through garments of every weight and 
seems to chill the very blood in a man's body. 

"How deep is the water?" I asked. 

"It varies — from two to eight feet. Here it is 
shallow." 

"I should think they would come over." 

"The water is full of barbed wire," he said grimly. 
"And some, a great many, have tried — and failed." 

As of the trenches, many have written of the stenches 
of this war. But the odour of that beautiful lagoon 
was horrible. I do not care to emphasize it. It is 
one of the things best forgotten. But any lingering 
belief I may have had in the grandeur and glory of 
war died that night beside that silver lake — died of an 
odour, and will never live again. 

And now came a discussion. 

The road crossing the railroad embankment turned 
sharply to the left and proceeded in front of the 
trenches. There was no shelter on that side of the 
embankment. The inundation bordered the road, and 
just beyond the inundation were the German trenches. 

There were no trees, no shrubbery, no houses ; just a 
flat road, paved with Belgian blocks, that gleamed in 
the moonlight. 



NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 



125 



At last the decision was made. We would go along 
the road, provided I realised from the first that it was 
dangerous. One or two could walk there with a good 
chance for safety, but not more. The little group had 
been augmented. It must break up; two might walk 
together, and then two a safe distance behind. Four 
would certainly be fired on. 

I wanted to go. It was not a matter of courage. 
I had simply, parrot-fashion, mimicked the attitude 
of mind of the officers. One after another I 
had seen men go into danger with a shrug of the 
shoulders. 

"If it comes it comes !" they said, and went on. So 
I, too, had become a fatalist. If I was to be shot it 
would happen, if I had to buy a rifle and try to clean 
it myself to fulfil my destiny. 

So they let me go. I went farther than they 
expected, as it turned out. There was a great deal of 
indignation and relief when it was over. But that is 
later on. 

A very tall Belgian officer took me in charge. It 
was necessary to work through a barbed-wire barri- 
cade, twisting and turning through its mazes. The 
moonlight helped. It was at once a comfort and an 
anxiety, for it seemed to me that my khaki-coloured 
suit gleamed in it. The Belgian officers in their dark 
blue were less conspicuous. I thought they had an 
unfair advantage of me, and that it was idiotic of the 
British to wear and advocate anything so absurd as 
khaki. My cape ballooned like a sail in the wind. I 
felt at least double my ordinary size, and that even a 
sniper with a squint could hardly miss me. And, by 
way of comfort, I had one last instruction before t 
started : 



126 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

"If a fusee goes up, stand perfectly still. If you 
move they will fire." 

The entire safety of the excursion depended on a 
sort of tacit agreement that, in part at least, obtains 
as to sentries. 

This is a new warfare, one of artillery, supported 
by infantry in trenches. And it has been necessary to 
make new laws for it. One of the most curious is a 
sort of modus vivendi by which each side protects its 
own sentries by leaving the enemy's sentries unmo- 
lested so long as there is no active fighting. They are 
always in plain view before the trenches. In case of 
a charge they are the first to be shot, of course. But 
long nights and days have gone by along certain parts . 
of the front where the hostile trenches are close to- 
gether, and the sentries, keeping their monotonous 
lookout, have been undisturbed. 

No doubt by this time the situation has changed to 
a certain extent ; there has been more active fighting, , 
larger bodies of men are involved. The spring floods 
south of the inundation will have dried up. No Man' 
Land will have ceased to be a swamp and the deadlock 
may be broken. 

But on that February night I put my faith in this 
agreement, and it held. 

The tall Belgian officer asked me if I was frightened. 
I said I was not. This was not exactly the truth ; but it 
was no time for the truth. 

"They are not shooting," I said. "It looks perfectly 
safe." 

He shrugged his shoulders and glanced toward the 
German trenches. 

"They have been sleeping during the rain," he said 
briefly. "But when one of them wakes up, look out!" 



NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 127 

After that there was little conversation, and what 
there was was in whispers. 

As we proceeded the stench from the beautiful 
moonlit water grew overpowering. The officer told 
me the reason. 

A little farther along a path of fascines had been 
built out over the inundation to an outpost halfway to 
the German trenches. The building of this narrow 
roadway had cost many lives. 

Half a mile along the road we were sharply chal- 
lenged by a sentry. When he had received the pass- 
word he stood back and let us pass. Alone, in that 
bleak and exposed position in front of the trenches, 
always in full view as he paced back and forward, car- 
bine on shoulder, with not even a tree trunk or a hedge 
for shelter, the first to go at the whim of some German 
sniper or at any indication of an attack, he was a -pa- 
thetic, almost a tragic, figure. He looked very young 
too. I stopped and asked him in a whisper how old 
he was. 

He said he was nineteen! 

He may have been. I know something about boys, 
and I think he was seventeen at the most. There are 
plenty of boys of that age doing just what that lad 
was doing. 

Afterward I learned that it was no part of the 
original plan to take a woman over the fascine path 

to the outpost; that Captain F ground his teeth 

in impotent rage when he saw where I was being 
taken. But it was not possible to call or even to come 
up to us. So, blithely and unconsciously the tall Bel- 
gian officer and I turned to the right, and I was inno- 
cently on my way to the German trenches. 

After a little I realised that this was rather more 



128 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

war than I had expected. The fascines were slippery ; 
the path only four or five feet wide. On each side 
was the water, hideous with many secrets. 

I stopped, a third of the way out, and looked back. 
It looked about as dangerous in one direction as an- 
other. So we went on. Once I slipped and fell. And 
now, looming out of the moonlight, I could see the 
outpost which was the object of our visit. 

I have always been grateful to that Belgian lieuten- 
ant for his mistake. Just how grateful I might have 
been had anything untoward happened, I cannot say. 
But the excursion was worth all the risk, and 
more. 

On a bit of high ground stands what was once the 
tiny hamlet of Oudstuyvenskerke — the ruins of two 
small white houses and the tower of the destroyed 
church — hardly a tower any more, for only three sides 
of it are standing and they are riddled with great shell 
holes. 

Six hundred feet beyond this tower were the Ger- 
man trenches. The little island was hardly a hundred 
feet in its greatest dimension. 

I wish I could make those people who think that war 
is good for a country see that Belgian outpost as I 
saw it that night under the moonlight. Perhaps we 
were under suspicion; I do not know. Suddenly the 
fusees, which had ceased for a time, began again, and 
with their white light added to that of the moon the 
desolate picture of that tiny island was a picture of 
the war. There was nothing lacking. There was the 
beauty of the moonlit waters, there was the tragedy 
of the destroyed houses and the church, and there was 
the horror of unburied bodies. 

There was heroism, too, of the kind that will make 



NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 129 

Belgium live in history. For in the top of that church 
tower for months a Capuchin monk has held his posi- 
tion alone and unrelieved. He has a telephone, and he 
gains access to his position in the tower by means of 
a rope ladder which he draws up after him. 

Furious fighting has taken place again and again 
round the base of the tower. The German shells assail 
it constantly. But when I left Belgium the Capuchin 
monk, who has become a soldier, was still on duty; 
still telephoning the ranges of the gun; still notifying 
headquarters of German preparations for a charge. 

Some day the church tower will fall and he will go 
with it, or it will be captured ; one or the other is in- 
evitable. Perhaps it has already happened; for not 
long ago I saw in the newspapers that furious fighting 
was taking place at this very spot. 

He came down and I talked to him — a little man, 
regarding his situation as quite ordinary, and looking 
quaintly unpriestlike in his uniform of a Belgian officer 
with its tasselled cap. Some day a great story will be 
written of these priests of Belgium who have left 
their churches to fight. 

We spoke in whispers. There was after all very 
little to say. It would have embarrassed him horribly 
had any one told him that he was a heroicfigure. And 
the ordinary small talk is not currency in such a situa- 
tion. 

We shook hands and I think I wished him luck. 
Then he went back again to the long hours and days 
of waiting. 

I passed under his telephone wires. Some day he 
will telephone that a charge is coming. He will give 
all the particulars calmly, concisely. Then the message 
will break off abruptly. He will have sent his last 



130 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

warning. For that is the way these men at the advance 
posts die. 

As we started again I was no longer frightened. 
Something of his courage had communicated itself to 
me, his courage and his philosophy, perhaps his faith. 

The priest had become a soldier; but he was still 
a priest in his heart. For he had buried the German 
dead in one great grave before the church, and over 
them had put the cross of his belief. 

It was rather absurd on the way back over the path 
of death to be escorted by a cat. It led the way over 
the fascines, treading daintily and cautiously. Perhaps 
one of the destroyed houses at the outpost had been 
its home, and with a cat's fondness for places it re- 
mained there, though everything it knew had gone; 
though battle and sudden death had usurped the place 
of its peaceful fireside, though that very fireside was 
become a heap of stone and plaster, open to winds and 
rain. 

Again and again in destroyed towns I have seen 
these forlorn cats stalking about, trying vainly to ad- 
just themselves to new conditions, cold and hungry 
and homeless. 

We were challenged repeatedly on the way back. 
Coming from the direction we did we were open to 
suspicion. It was necessary each time to halt some 
forty feet from the sentry, who stood with his rifle 
pointed at us. Then the officer advanced with the 
word. 

Back again, then, along the road, past the youthful 
sentry, past other sentries, winding through the barbed- 
wire barricade, and at last, quite whole, to the House 
of the Barrier again. We had walked three miles in 
front of the Belgian advanced trenches, in full view of 



NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 131 

the Germans. There had been no protecting hedge or 
bank or tree between us and that ominous line two 
hundred yards across. And nothing whatever had 
happened. 

Captain F — > — was indignant. The officers in the 
House of the Barrier held up their hands. For men 
such a risk was legitimate, necessary. In a woman it 
was foolhardy. Nevertheless, now that it was safely 
over, they were keenly interested and rather amused. 
But I have learned that the gallant captain and the 
officer with him had arranged, in case shooting began, 
to jump into the water, and by splashing about draw 
the fire in their direction! 

We went back to the automobile, a long walk over 
the shell-eaten roads in the teeth of a biting wind. But 
a glow of exultation kept me warm. I had been to the 
front. I had been far beyond the front, indeed, and 
I had seen such a picture of war and its desolation 
there in the centre of No Man's Land as perhaps no 
one not connected with an army had seen before; such 
a picture as would live in my mind forever. 

I visited other advanced trenches that night as we 
followed the Belgian lines slowly northward toward 
Nieuport. 

Save the varying conditions of discomfort, they 
were all similar. Always they were behind the rail- 
road embankment. Always they were dirty and cold. 
Frequently they were full of mud and water. To reach 
them one waded through swamps and pools. Just 
beyond them there was always the moonlit stretch of 
water, now narrow, now wide. 

I was to see other trenches later on, French and 
English. But only along the inundation was there that 
curious combination of beauty and hideousness, of 



132 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

rippling water with the moonlight across it in a silver 
path, and in that water things that had been men. 

In one place a cow and a pig were standing on 
ground a little bit raised. They had been there for 
weeks between the two armies. Neither side would 
shoot them, in the hope of some time obtaining them 
for food. 

They looked peaceful, rather absurd. 

Now so near that one felt like whispering, and now 
a quarter of a mile away, were the German trenches. 
We moved under their fusees, passing destroyed towns 
where shell holes have become vast graves. 

One such town was most impressive. It had been 
a very beautiful town, rather larger than the others. 
At the foot of the main street ran the railroad em- 
bankment and the line of trenches. There was not a 
house left. 

It had been, but a day or two before, the scene of 
a street fight, when the Germans, swarming across the 
inundation, had captured the trenches at the railroad 
and got into the town itself. 

At the intersection of two* streets, in a shell hole, 
twenty bodies had been thrown for burial. But that 
was not novel or new. Shell-hole graves and destroyed 
houses were nothing. The thing I shall never forget 
is the cemetery round the great church. 

Continental cemeteries are always crowded. They 
are old, and graves almost touch one another. The 
crosses which mark them stand like rows of men in 
close formation. 

This cemetery had been shelled. There was not a 
cross in place ; they lay flung about in every grotesque 
position. The quiet God's Acre had become a hell. 
Graves were uncovered; the dust of centuries exposed. 



NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 133 

In one the cross had been lifted up by an explosion 
and had settled back again upside down, so that the 
Christ was inverted. 

It was curious to stand in that chaos of destruction, 
that ribald havoc, that desecration of all we think of 
as sacred, and see, stretched from one broken tomb- 
stone to another, the telephone wires that connect the 
trenches at the foot of the street with headquarters 
and with the "chateau." 

Ninety-six German soldiers had been buried in one 
shell hole in that cemetery. Close beside it there was 
another, a great gaping wound in the earth, half full 
of water from the evening's rain. 

An officer beside me looked down into it. 

"See," he said, "they dig their own graves !" 

It was almost morning. The automobile left the 
pathetic ruin of the town and turned back toward the 
"chateau." There was no talking ; a sort of heaviness 
of spirit lay on us all. The officers were seeing again 
the destruction of their country through my shocked 
eyes. We were tired and cold, and I was heartsick. 

A long drive through the dawn, and then the "cha- 
teau." 

The officers were still up, waiting. They had pre- 
pared, against our arrival, sandwiches and hot drinks. 

The American typewriters in the next room clicked 
and rattled. At the telephone board messages were 
coming in from the very places we had just left — 
from the instrument at the major's elbow as he lay in 
his trench beside the House of the Barrier; from the 
priest who had left his cell and become a soldier; from 
that desecrated and ruined graveyard with its gaping 
shell holes that waited, open-mouthed, for — what? 

When we had eaten, Captain F rose and made 



134 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

a little speech. It was simply done, in the words of 
a soldier and a patriot speaking out of a full heart. 

"You have seen to-night a part of what is happening 
to our country/' he said. "You have seen what the 
invading hosts of Germany have made us suffer. But 
you have seen more than that. You have seen that the 
Belgian Army still exists; that it is still fighting and 
will continue to fight. The men in those trenches 
fought at Liege, at Louvain, at Antwerp, at the Yser. 
They will fight as long as there is a drop of Belgian 
blood to shed. 

"Beyond the enemy's trenches lies our country, dev- 
astated; our national life destroyed; our people under 
the iron heel of Germany. But Belgium lives. Tell 
America, tell the world, that destroyed, injured as she 
is, Belgium lives and will rise again, greater than 
before!" 






CHAPTER XIII 
"WIPERS" 



From My Journal: 

AN aeroplane man at the next table starts to-night 
on a dangerous scouting expedition over the 
German lines. In case he does not return he has 
given a letter for his mother to Captain T . 

It now appears quite certain that I am to be sent 
along the French and English lines. I shall be the 
first correspondent, I am told, to see the British front, 
as "Eyewitness," who writes for the English papers, 
is supposed to be a British officer. 

I have had word also that I am to see Mr. Winston 
Churchill, the First Lord of the British Admiralty. 
But to-day I am going to Ypres. The Tommies call 
it "Wipers." 

Before I went abroad I had two ambitions among 
others: One was to be able to pronounce Ypres; the 
other was to bring home and exhibit to my admiring 
friends the pronunciation of Przemysl. To a moder- 
ate extent I have succeeded with the first. I have 
discovered that the second one must be born to. 

Two or three towns have stood out as conspicuous 
points of activity in the western field. Ypres is one 
of these towns. Day by day it figures in the reports 
from the front. The French are there, and just to 

i35 



136 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

the east the English line commences.* The line of 
trenches lies beyond the town, forming a semicircle 
round it. 

A few days later I saw this semicircle, the flat and 
muddy battlefield of Ypres. But on this visit I was to 
see only the town, which, although completely de- 
stroyed, was still being shelled. 

The curve round the town gave the invading army 
a great advantage in its destruction. It enabled them 
to shell it from three directions, so that it was raked 
by cross fire. For that reason the town of Ypres 
presents one of the most hideous pictures of deso- 
lation of the present war. 

General M had agreed to take me to Ypres. 

But as he was a Belgian general, and the town of 
Ypres is held by the French, it was a part of the 
etiquette of war that we should secure the escort 
of a French officer at the town of Poperinghe. 

For war has its etiquette, and of a most exacting 
kind. And yet in the end it simplifies things. It is 
to war what rules are to bridge — something to lead 
by! Frequently I was armed with passes to visit, 
for instance, certain batteries. My escort was gen- 
erally a member of the Headquarters' Staff of that 
particular army. But it was always necessary to visit 
first the officer in command of that battery, who in 
his turn either accompanied us to the battlefield or 
deputised one of his own staff. The result was an 
imposing number of uniforms of various sorts, and 
the conviction, as I learned, among the gunners that 
some visiting royalty was on an excursion to the 
front ! 

It was a cold winter day in February, a grey day 
* Written in May, 1915. 



WIPERS" 137 



with a fine snow that melted as soon as it touched 
the ground. Inside the car we were swathed in rugs. 
The chauffeur slapped his hands at every break in 
the journey, and sentries along the road hugged such 
shelter as they could find. 

As we left Pbperinghe the French officer, Com- 
mandant D , pointed to a file of men plodding 

wearily through the mud. 

'The heroes of last night's attack," he said. "They 
are very tired, as you see." 

We stopped the car and let the men file past. They 
did not look like heroes; they looked tired and dirty 
and depressed. Although our automobile generally at- 
tracted much attention, scarcely a man lifted his head 
to glance at us. They went on drearily through the 
mud under the pelting sleet, drooping from fatigue 
and evidently suffering from keen reaction after the 
excitement of the night before. 

I have heard the French soldier crticised for this 
reaction. It may certainly be forgiven him, in view 
of his splendid bravery. But part of the criticism 
is doubtless justified. The English Tommy fights as 
he does everything else. There is a certain sporting 
element in what he does. He puts into his fighting 
the same fairness he puts into sport, and it is a point 
of honour with him to keep cool. The English gunner 
will admire the enemy's marksmanship while he is 
ducking a shell. 

The French soldier, on the other hand, fights under 
keen excitement. He is temperamental, imaginative; 
as he fights he remembers all the bitterness of the 
past, its wrongs, its cruelties. He sees blood. There 
is nothing that will hold him back. The result has 
made history, is making history to-day. 



138 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

But he has the reaction of his temperament. Who 
shall say he is not entitled to it ? 

Something of this I mentioned to Monsieur le Com- 
mandant as the line filed past. 

"It is because it is fighting that gets nowhere," 
he replied. "If our men, after such an attack, could 
advance, could do anything but crawl back into holes 
full of water and mud, you would see them gay and 
smiling to-day." 

After a time I discovered that the same situation 
holds to a certain extent in all the armies. If his 
fighting gets him anywhere the soldier is content. The 
line has made a gain. What matter wet trenches, dis- 
comfort, freezing cold? The line has made a gain. 
It is lack of movement that sends their spirits down, 
the fearful boredom of the trenches, varied only by 
the dropping shells, so that they term themselves, 
ironically, "Cannon food." 

We left the victorious company behind, making 
their way toward whatever church bedded down with 
straw, or coach-house or drafty barn was to house 
them for their rest period. 

"They have been fighting waist-deep in water," 
said the Commandant, "and last night was cold. The 
British soldier rubs his body with oil and grease be- 
fore he dresses for the trenches. I hope that before 
long our men may do this also. It is a great pro- 
tection." 

I have in front of me now a German soldier's 
fatigue cap, taken by one of those men from a dead 
soldier who lay in front of the trench. 

It is a pathetic cap, still bearing the crease which 
showed how he folded it to thrust it into his pocket. 
When his helmet irked him in the trenches he was 



WIPERS" 139 



allowed to take it off and put this on. He belonged 
to Bavarian Regiment Number Fifteen, and the cap 
was given him in October, 1914. There is a blood- 
stain on one side of it. Also it is spotted with mud 
inside and out. It is a pathetic little cap, because 
when its owner died, that night before, a thousand 
other Germans died with him, died to gain a trench 
two hundred yards from their own line, a trench to 
capture which would have gained them little but glory, 
and which, since they failed, lost them everything, 
even life itself. 

We were out of the town by this time, and started 
on the road to Ypres. Between Poperinghe and Ypres 
were numerous small villages with narrow, twisting 
streets. They were filled with soldiers at rest, with 
tethered horses being re-shod by army blacksmiths, 
with small fires in sheltered corners on which an 
anxious cook had balanced a kettle. 

In each town a proclamation had been nailed to a 
wall and the townspeople stood about it, gaping. 

"An inoculation proclamation," explained the Com- 
mandant. "There is typhoid here, so the civilians are 
to be inoculated. They are very much excited about 
it. It appears to them worse than a bombard- 
ment." 

We passed a file of Spahis, native Algerians who 
speak Arabic. They come from Tunis and Algeria, 
and, as may be imagined, they were suffering bitterly 
from the cold. 

They peered at us with bright, black eyes from the 
encircling folds of the great cloaks with pointed hoods 
which they had drawn closely about them. They have 
French officers and interpreters, and during the spring 
fighting they probably proved very valuable. During 



140 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

the winter they gave me the impression of being out 
of place and rather forlorn. Like the Indian troops 
with the British, they were fighting a new warfare. 
For gallant charges over dry desert sands had been 
substituted mud and mist and bitter cold, and the stag- 
nation of armies. 

Terrible tales have been told of the ferocity of 
these Arabs, and of the Turcos also. I am inclined 
to think they are exaggerated. But certainly, met 
with on a lonely road, these long files of men in their 
quaint costumes moving silently along with heads 
lowered against the wind were sombre, impressive 
and rather alarming. 

The car, going furiously, skidded, was pulled 
sharply round and righted itself. The conversation 
went on. No one appeared to notice that we had been 
on the edge of eternity, and it was not for me to 
mention it. But I made a jerky entry in my note- 
book: 

"Very casual here about human life. Enlarge on 
this. ,, 

The general, who was a Belgian, continued his com- 
plaint. It was about the Belgian absentee tax. 

The Germans now in control in Belgium had im- 
posed an absentee tax of ten times the normal on all 
Belgians who had left the country and did not re- 
turn by the fifteenth of March. The general snorted 
his rage and disgust. 

"But," I said innocently, "I should think it would 
make very little difference to you. You are not there, 
so of course you cannot pay it." 

"Not there!" he said. "Of course I am not there. 
But everything I own in the world is there, except 
this uniform that I have on my back." 



"WIPERS" 141 



"They would confiscate it?" I asked. "Not the uni- 
form, of course; I mean your property." 

He broke into a torrent of rapid French. I felt 
quite sure that he was saying that they would con- 
fiscate it; that they would annihilate it, reduce it 
to its atomic constituents ; take it, acres and buildings 
and shade trees and vegetable garden, back to Ger- 
many. But as his French was of the ninety horse- 
power variety and mine travels afoot, like Bayard 
Taylor, and limps at that, I never caught up with 
him. 

Later on, in a calmer moment, I had the thing ex- 
plained to me. 

It appears that the Germans have instituted a tax 
on all the Belgian refugees of ten times the normal 
tax; the purpose being to bring back into Belgium 
such refugees as wish to save the remnants of their 
property. This will mean bringing back people of 
the better class who have property to save. It will 
mean to the far-seeing German mind a return of the 
better class of Belgians to reorganise things, to put 
that prostrate country on its feet again, to get the 
poorer classes to work, to make it self-supporting. 

"The real purpose, of course," said my informant, 
"is so that American sympathy, now so potent, will 
cease for both refugees and interned Belgians. If 
the factories start, and there is work for them, and 
the refugees still refuse to return, you can see what it 
means." 

He may be right; I do not think so. I believe 
that at this moment Germany regards Belgium as a 
new but integral part of the German Empire, and 
that she wishes to see this new waste land of hers 
productive. Assuredly Germany has made a serious 



142 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

effort to reorganise and open again some of the great 
Belgian factories that are now idle. 

In one instance that I know of a manufacturer was 
offered a large guarantee to come back and put his i 
factory into operation again. He refused, although i 
he knew that it spelled ruin. The Germans, unable 
themselves at this time to put skilled labour in his mill, 
sent its great machines by railroad back into Ger- 
many. I have been told that this has happened in i 
a number of instances. Certainly it sounds entirely ' 
probable. 

The factory owner in question is in America at I 
the time I am writing this, obtaining credit and new i 
machines against the time of the retirement of the : 
German Army. 

From the tax the conversation went on to the : 
finances of Belgium. I learned that the British Gov- • 
ernment, through the Bank of England, is guaran- • 
teeing the payment of the Belgian war indemnity to 
Germany ! The war indemnity is over nineteen mil- - 
lion pounds, or approximately ninety-six millions of h 
dollars. Of this the Belgian authorities are instructed 1 
to pay over nine million dollars each month. 

The Societe Generale de Belgique has been obliged I 
by the German Government to accept the power of 
issuing notes, on a strict understanding that it must 
guarantee the note issue on the gold reserve and for- 
eign bill book, which is at present deposited in the 
Bank of England at London. If the Societe Generale 
de Belgique had not done so, all notes of the Bank 
of Belgium would have been declared valueless by 
Germany. 

A very prominent Englishman, married to a Bel- 
gian lady, told me a story about this gold reserve 



WIPERS" 143 



which is amusing enough to repeat, and which has a 
certain appearance of truth. 

When the Germans took possession of Brussels, 
he said, their first move was to send certain officers 
to the great Brussels Bank, in whose vaults the gold 
reserve was kept. The word had been sent ahead 
that they were coming, and demanding that certain 
high officials of the bank were to be present. 

The officials went to the bank, and the German 
officers presented themselves promptly. 

The conversation was brief. 

"Take us to the vaults/' said one of the German 
officers. 

"To the vaults?" said the principal official of the 
bank. 

"To the vaults," was the curt reply. 

"I am not the vault keeper. We shall have to send 
for him." 

The bank official was most courteous, quite bland, 
indeed. The officer scowled, but there was nothing 
to do but wait. 

The vault keeper was sent for. It took some time 
to find him. 

The bank official commented on the weather, which 
was, he considered, extremely warm. 

At last the vault keeper came. He was quite breath- 
less. But it seemed that, not knowing why he came, 
he had neglected to bring his keys. The bank official 
regretted the delay. The officers stamped about. 

"It looks like a shower," said the bank official. 
"Later in the day it may be cooler." 

The officers muttered among themselves. 

It took the vault keeper a long time to get his keys 
and return, but at last he arrived. They went down 



144 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

and down, through innumerable doors that must be 
unlocked before them, through gratings and more 
steel doors. And at last they stood in the vaults. 

The German officers stared about and then turned 
to the Belgian official. 

"The gold!" they said furiously. "Where is the 
gold?" 

"The gold!" said the official, much surprised. 
"You wished to see the gold? I am sorry. You 
asked for the vaults and I have shown you the 
vaults. The gold, of course, is in England." 

We sped on, the same flat country, the same grey 
fields, the same files of soldiers moving across those 
fields toward distant billets, the same transports 
and ambulances, and over all the same colourless sky. 

Not very long ago some inquiring British scientist 
discovered that on foggy days in London the efficiency 
of the average clerk was cut down about fifty per 
cent. One begins to wonder how much of this winter 
impasse is due to the weather, and what the bright 
and active days of early spring will bring. Cer- 
tainly the weather that day weighed on me. It was 
easier to look out through the window of the car 
than to get out and investigate. The penetrating cold 
dulled our spirits. 

A great lorry had gone into the mud at the side 
of the road and was being dug out. A horse neatly 
disembowelled lay on its back in the road, its four 
stark legs pointed upward. 

"They have been firing at a German Taube" said 
the Commandant, "and naturally what goes up must 
come down." 

On the way back we saw the same horse. It was 
dark by that time, and some peasants had gathered 






"WIPERS" 145 



round the carcass with a lantern. The hide had been 
cut away and lay at one side, and the peasants 
were carving the animal into steaks and roasts. For 
once fate had been good to them. They would dine 
that night. 

Everywhere here and there along the road we had 
passed the small sheds that sentries built to protect 
themselves against the wind, little huts the size of an 
American patrol box, built of the branches of trees 
and thatched all about with straw. 

Now we passed one larger than the others, a shed 
with the roof thatched and the sides plastered with 
mud to keep out the cold. 

The Commandant halted the car. There was one 
bare little room with a wooden bench and a door. 
The bench and the door had just played their part 
in a tragedy. 

I have been asked again and again whether it is 
true that on both sides of the line disheartened sol- 
diers have committed suicide during this long winter 
of waiting. I have always replied that I do not 
know. On the Allied side it is thought that many 
Germans have done so; I daresay the Germans make 
the same contention. This one instance is perfectly 
true. But it was the result of an accident, not of dis- 
couragement. 

The sentry was alone in his hut, and he was cleaning 
his gun. For a certain length of time he would be 
alone. In some way the gun exploded and blew off 
his right hand. There was no one to call on for 
help. He waited quite a while. It was night. No- 
body came; he was suffering frightfully. 

Perhaps, sitting there alone, he tried to think out 
what life would be without a right hand. In the end 



146 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

he decided that it was not worth while. But he 
could not pull the trigger of his gun with his left hand. 
He tried it and failed. So at last he tied a stout cord 
to the trigger, fastened the end of it to the door, and 
sitting on the bench kicked the door to. They had just 
taken him away. 

Just back of Ypres there is a group of buildings 
that had been a great lunatic asylum. It is now a hos- 
pital for civilians, although it is partially destroyed. 

"During the evacuation of the town," said the Com- 
mandant, "it was decided that the inmates must be 
taken out. The asylum had been hit once and shells 
were falling in every direction. So the nuns dressed 
their patients and started to march them back along 
the route to the nearest town. Shells were falling 
all about them; the nuns tried to hurry them, but 
as each shell fell or exploded close at hand the luna- 
tics cheered and clapped their hands. They could 
hardly get them away at all ; they wanted to stay and 
see the excitement. ,, 

That is a picture, if you like. It was a very large 
asylum, containing hundreds of patients. The nuns 
could not hurry them. They stood in the roads, faces 
upturned to the sky, where death was whining its 
shrill cry overhead. When a shell dropped into the 
road, or into the familiar fields about them, tearing 
great holes, flinging earth and rocks in every direc- 
tion, they cheered. They blocked the roads, so that 
gunners with badly needed guns could not get by. 
And behind and all round them the nuns urged them 
on in vain. Some of them were killed, I believe. 
All about great holes in fields and road tell the story 
of the hell that beat about them. 

Here behind the town one sees fields of graves 



'WIPERS" 147 



marked each with a simple wooden cross. Here and 
there a soldier's cap has been nailed to the cross. 

The officers told me that in various places the 
French peasants had placed the dead soldier's number 
and identifying data in a bottle and placed it on the 
grave. But I did not see this myself. 

Unlike American towns, there is no gradual ap- 
proach to these cities of Northern France; no strag- 
gling line of suburbs. Many of them were laid out 
at a time when walled cities rose from the plain, and 
although the walls are gone the tradition of com- 
pactness for protection still holds good. So one mo- 
ment we were riding through the shell-holed fields of 
Northern France and the next we were in the city 
of Ypres. 

At the time of my visit few civilians had seen the 
city of Ypres since its destruction. I am not sure that 
any had been there. I have seen no description of it, 
and I have been asked frequently if it is really true 
that the beautiful Cloth Hall is gone — that most fa- 
mous of all the famous buildings of Flanders. 

Ypres ! 

What a tragedy ! Not a city now ; hardly a skeleton 
of a city. Rumour is correct, for the wonderful Cloth 
Hall is gone. There is a fragment left of the facade, 
but no repairing can ever restore it. It must all come 
down. Indeed, any storm may finish its destruction. 
The massive square belfry, two hundred and thirty 
feet high and topped by its four turrets, is a sheP 
swaying in every gust of wind. 

The inimitable arcade at the end is quite gone. 
Nothing indeed is left of either the Cloth Hall, which, 
built in the year 1200, was the most remarkable edi- 
fice of Belgium, or of the Cathedral behind it, erected 



148 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

in 1300 to succeed an earlier edifice. General M — > — 
stood by me as I stared at the ruins of these two great 
buildings. Something of the tragedy of Belgium was 
in his face. 

"We were very proud of it," he said. "If we 
started now to build another it would take more than 
seven hundred years to give it history." 

There were shells overhead. But they passed harm- 
lessly, falling either into the open country or into 
distant parts of the town. We paid no attention to 
them, but my curiosity was roused. 

"It seems absurd to continue shelling the town," I 
said. "There is nothing left/' 

Then and there I had a lesson in the new warfare. 
Bombardment of the country behind the enemy's 
trenches is not necessarily to destroy towns. Its 
strategical purpose, I was told, is to cut off communi- 
cations, to prevent, if possible, the bringing up of re- 
serve troops and transport wagons, to destroy am- 
munition trains. I was new to war, with everything 
to learn. This perfectly practical explanation had 
not occurred to me. 

"But how do they know when an ammunition train 
is coming?" I asked. 

"There are different methods. Spies, of course, al- 
ways. And aeroplanes also." 

"But an ammunition train moves." 

It was necessary then to explain the various 
methods by. which aeroplanes signal, giving ranges 
and locations. I have seen since that time the charts 
carried by aviators and airship crews, in which every 
hedge, every ditch, every small detail of the land- 
scape is carefully marked. In the maps I have seen 
the region is divided into lettered squares, each square 



"WIPERS" 149 



made up of four small squares, numbered. Thus B 
3 means the third block of the B division, and so on. 
By wireless or in other ways the message is sent to 
the batteries, and B 3, along which an ammunition 
train is moving, suddenly finds itself under fire. Thus 
ended the second lesson! 

An ammunition train, having safely escaped B 3 
and all the other terrors that are spread for such 
as it, rumbled by, going through the Square. The 
very vibration of its wheels as they rattled along the 
street set parts of the old building to shaking. Stones 
fell. It was not safe to stand near the belfry. 

Up to this time I had found a certain philosophy 
among the French and Belgian officers as to the de- 
struction of their towns. Not of Louvain, of course, 
or those earlier towns destroyed during the German 
invasion, but of the bombardment which is taking 
place now along the battle line. But here I encoun- 
tered furious resentment. 

There is nothing whatever left of the city for sev- 
eral blocks in each direction round the Cloth Hall. 
At the time it was destroyed the army of the Allies 
was five miles in advance of the town. The shells 
went over their heads for days, weeks. 

So accurate is modern gunnery that given a chart 
of a city the gunner can drop a shell within a few 
yards of any desired spot. The Germans had a chart 
of Ypres. They might have saved the Cloth Hall, as 
they did save the Cathedral at Antwerp. But they were 
furious with thwarted ambition — the onward drive had 
been checked. Instead of attempting to save the Cloth 
Hall they focussed all their fire on it. There was 
nothing to gain by this wanton destruction. 

It is a little difficult in America, where great struc- 



150 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

tures are a matter of steel and stone erected in a year 
or so, to understand what its wonderful old build- 
ings meant to Flanders. In a way they typified its 
history, certainly its art. The American likes to have 
his art in his home ; he buys great paintings and puts 
them on the walls. He covers his floors with the 
entire art of a nomadic people. But on the Conti- 
nent the method is different. They have built their 
art into their buildings; their great paintings are in 
churches or in structures like the Cloth Hall. Their 
homes are comparatively unadorned, purely places for 
living. All that they prize they have stored, open to 
the world, in their historic buildings. It is for that 
reason that the destruction of the Cloth Hall of Ypres 
is a matter of personal resentment to each individual 
of the nation to which it belonged. So I watched the 
faces of the two officers with me. There could be no 
question as to their attitude. It was a personal loss 
they had suffered. The loss of their homes they had 
accepted stoically. But this was much more. It was 
the loss of their art, their history, their tradition. 
And it could not be replaced. 

The firing was steady, unemotional. 

As the wind died down we ventured into the ruins 
of the Cloth Hall itself. The roof is gone, of course. 
The building took fire from the bombardment, and 
what the shells did not destroy the fire did. Melted 
lead from ancient gutters hung in stalactites. In one 
place a wall was still standing, with a bit of its mural 
decoration. I picked up a bit of fallen gargoyle from 
under the fallen tower and brought it away. It is 
before me now. 

It is seven hundred and fifteen years since that 
gargoyle was lifted into its place. The Crusades were 



"WIPERS" 151 



going on about that time; the robber barons were 
sallying out onto the plains on their raiding excur- 
sions. The Norman Conquest had taken place. From 
this very town of Ypres had gone across the Channel 
"workmen and artisans to build churches and feudal 
castles, weavers and workers of many crafts.' , 

In those days the Yperlee, a small river, ran open 
through the town. But for many generations it has 
been roofed over and run under the public square. 

It was curious to stand on the edge of a great shell 
hole and look down at the little river, now uncovered 
to the light of day for the first time in who knows how 
long. 

In all that chaos, with hardly a wall intact, at the 
corner of what was once the cathedral, stood a heroic 
marble figure of Burgomaster Vandenpeereboom. It 
was quite untouched and as placid as the little river, a 
benevolent figure rising from the ruins of war. 

"They have come like a pestilence," said the Gen- 
eral. "When they go they will leave nothing. What 
they will do is written in what they have done." 

Monsieur le Commandant had disappeared. Now 
he returned triumphant, carrying a great bundle in 
both arms. 

"I have been to what was the house of a relative," 
he explained. "He has told me that in the cellar I 
would find these. They will interest you." 

"These" proved to be five framed photographs of 
the great paintings that had decorated the walls of the 
great Cloth Hall. Although they had been hidden in 
a cellar, fragments of shell had broken and torn them. 
But it was still possible to gain from them a faint idea 
of the interior beauty of the old building before its de- 
struction. 



ip KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

I examined them there in the public square, with 
a shell every now and then screeching above but fall- 
ing harmlessly far away. 

A priest joined us. He told pathetically of watch- 
ing the destruction of the Arcade, of seeing one arch 
after another go down until there was nothing left. 

'They ate it," said the priest graphically. "A bite 
at a time." 

We walked through the town. One street after 
another opened up its perspective of destruction. 
The strange antics that shell fire plays had left doors 
and lintels standing without buildings, had left intact 
here and there pieces of furniture. There was an 
occasional picture on an exposed wall; iron street 
lamps had been twisted into travesties; whole panes 
of glass remained in facades behind which the build- 
ings were gone. A part of the wooden scaffolding 
by which repairs were being made to the old tower 
of the Cloth Hall hung there uninjured by either flame 
or shell. 

On one street all the trees had been cut off as if 
by one shell, about ten feet above the ground, but in 
another, where nothing whatever remained but piles 
of stone and mortar, a great elm had apparently not 
lost a single branch. 

Much has been written about the desolation of these 
towns. To get a picture of it one must realise the 
solidity with which even the private houses are built. 
They are stone, or if not, the walls are of massive 
brick coated with plaster. There are no frame build- 
ings; wood is too expensive for that purpose. It is 
only in prodigal America that we can use wood. 

So the destruction of a town there means the de- 
struction of buildings that have stood for centuries, 



WIPERS' 



153 



and would in the normal course of events have stood 
for centuries more. 

A few civilians had crept back into the town. As 
in other places, they had come back because they had 
no place else to go. At any time a shell might de- 
stroy the fragment of the building in which they 
were trying to reestablish themselves. There were no 
shops open, because there were no shops to open. 
Supplies had to be brought from long distances. As 
all the horses and automobiles had been commandeered 
by the government, they had no way to get anything. 
Their situation was pitiable, tragic. And over them 
was the daily, hourly fear that the German Army 
would concentrate for its onward drive at some 
near-by point. 



CHAPTER XIV 
LADY DECIES' STORY 



TT was growing dark; the chauffeur was prepar- 
-■- ing to light the lamps of the car. Shells were 
fewer. With the approach of night the activity be- 
hind the lines increased ; more ammunition trains made 
their way over the debris ; regiments prepared for the 
trenches marched through the square on their way 
to the front. 

They were laden, as usual, with extra food and 
jars of water. Almost every man had an additional )• 
loaf of bread strapped to the knapsack at his back. 
They were laughing and talking among themselves, 
for they had had a sleep and hot food; for the time 
at least they were dry and fed and warm. 

On the way out of the town we passed a small 
restaurant, one of a row of houses. It was the only 
undestroyed building I saw in Ypres. 

"It is the only house," said the General, "where 
the inhabitants remained during the entire bombard- 
ment. They made coffee for the soldiers and served 
meals to officers. Shells hit the pavement and broke 
the windows; but the house itself is intact. It is ex- 
traordinary. " 

We stopped at the one-time lunatic asylum on ou 
way back. It had been converted into a hospital fo 
injured civilians, and its long wards were full of 

154 



LADY DECIES' STORY 155 

women and children. An English doctor was in 
charge. 

Some of the buildings had been destroyed, but in 
the main it had escaped serious injury. By a curious 
fatality that seems to have followed the chapels and 
churches of Flanders, the chapel was the only part that 
was entirely gone. One great^ shell struck it while it 
was housing soldiers, as usual, and all of them were 
killed. As an example of the work of one shell the 
destruction of that building was enormous. There 
was little or nothing left. 

"The shell was four feet high," said the Doctor, 
and presented me with the nose of it. 

"You may get more at any moment," I said. 

He shrugged his shoulders. "What must be, must 
be," he said quietly. 

When the bombardment was at its height, he said, 
they took their patients to the cellar and continued 
operating there. They had only a candle or two. 
But it was impossible to stop, for the wards were 
full of injured women and children. 

I walked through some of the wards. It was the 
first time I had seen together so many of the inno- 
cent victims of this war — children blind and forever 
cut off from the light of day, little girls with arms 
gone, women who will never walk again. 

It was twilight. Here and there a candle gleamed, 
for any bright illumination was considered unwise. 

What must they think as they lie there during the 
long dark hours between twilight and the late winter 
morning? Like the sentry, many of them must won- 
der if it is worth while. These are people, most of 
them, who have lived by their labour. What will 
they do when the war is over, or when, having made 



156 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

such recovery as they may, the hospital opens its 
doors and must perforce turn them out on the very 
threshold of war? 

And yet they cling to life. I met a man who crossed 
the Channel — I believe it was from Flushing — with 
the first lot of hopelessly wounded English prisoners 
who had been sent home to England from Germany 
in exchange for as many wrecked and battered Ger- 
mans on their way back to the Fatherland. 

One young boy was all eagerness. His home was 
on the cliff above the harbour which was their destina- 
tion. He alternately wept and cheered. 

"They'll be glad enough to see me, all right, ,, he 
said. "It's six months since they heard from me. 
More than likely they think I'm lying over there with 
some of the other chaps." 

He was in a wheeled chair. In his excitement 
the steamer rug slipped down. Both his legs were 
gone above the knees ! 

Our hands were full. The General had picked up 
a horseshoe on the street at Ypres and given it to me 
to bring me luck; the Commandant had the framed 
pictures. The General carried the gargoyle wrapped 
in a newspaper. I had the nose of the shell. 

We walked through the courtyard, with its broken 
fountain and cracked walks, out to the machine. The 
password for the night was "ficosse," which means 
"Scotland." The General gave the word to the or- 
derly and we went on again toward Poperinghe, where 
we were to have coffee. 

The firing behind us had ceased. Possibly the Ger- 
man gunners were having coffee also. We went at 
our usual headlong speed through almost empty roads. 
Now and then a lantern waved. We checked our 






LADY DECIES' STORY 157 

headlong speed to give the password, and on again. 
More lanterns; more challenges. 

Since we passed, a few hours before, another car 
had been wrecked by the road. One sees these cars 
everywhere, lying on their sides, turned turtle in 
ditches, bent and twisted against trees. No one seems 
to be hurt in these accidents ; at least one hears noth- 
ing of them, if they are. And now we were back 
at Poperinghe again. 

The Commandant had his headquarters in the 
house of a notary. Except in one instance, all the 
houses occupied by the headquarters' staffs that I 
visited were the houses of notaries. Perhaps the no- 
tary is the important man of a French town. I do not 
know. 

This was a double house with a centre hall, a house 
of some pretension in many ways. But it had only 
one lamp. When we went from one room to another 
we took the lamp with us. It was not even a hand- 
some lamp. In that very comfortable house it was one 
of the many anomalies of war. 

One or two of the best things from the museum 
at Ypres had been secured and brought back here. 
On a centre table was a bronze equestrian statue 
in miniature of a Crusader, a beautiful piece of work. 

While we were waiting for coffee the Commandant 
opened the lower drawer of a secretary and took out 
a letter. 

"This may interest Madame," he said. "I have 
just received it. It is from General Leman, the hero 
of Liege." 

He held it close to the lamp and read it. I have 
the envelope before me now. It is addressed in 
lead pencil and indorsed as coming from General 



158 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

Leman, Prisoner of War at Magdeburg, Germany. 

The letter was a soldier's simple letter, written to 
a friend. I wish I had made a copy of it; but I re- 
member in effect what it said. Clearly the hero of 
Liege has no idea that he is a hero. He said he had 
a good German doctor, but that he had been very ill. 
It is known, of course, that his foot was injured dur- 
ing the destruction of one of the fortresses just before 
he was captured. 

"I have a very good German doctor," he wrote. 
"But my foot gives me a great deal of trouble. Gan- 
grene set in and part of it had to be amputated. The 
wound refuses to heal, and in addition my heart is 
bad." 

He goes on to ask for his family, for news of them, 
especially of his daughter. I saw this letter in March. 
He had been taken a prisoner the previous August. 
He had then been seven or eight months without news 
of his family. 

"I am no longer young," he wrote in effect, for 
I am not quoting him exactly, "and I hope my friends 
will not forget me, in case of an exchange of prison- 
ers." 

He will never be forgotten. But of course he does 
not realise that. He is sixty-four and very ill. One 
read through all the restraint of the letter his longing 
to die among his own people. He hopes he will not 
be forgotten in an exchange of prisoners! 

The Commandant's orderly announced that coffee 
was served, and we followed the lamp across the hall. 
An English officer made a fourth at the table. 

It was good coffee, served with cream, the first 
I had seen for weeks. With it the Commandant 
served small, very thin cakes, with a layer of honey 



LADY DECIES' STORY 159 

in the centre. "A specialty of the country," he said. 

We talked of many things : of the attitude of Amer- 
ica toward the war, her incredulity as to atrocities, 
the German propaganda, and a rumour that had 
reached the front of a German-Irish coalition in the 
House of Representatives at Washington. 

From that the talk drifted to uniforms. The Com- 
mandant wished that the new French uniforms, in- 
stead of being a slaty blue, had been green, for use 
in the spring fighting. 

I criticised the new Belgian uniform, which seemed 
to me much thinner than the old. 

'That is wrong. It is of excellent cloth,' , said the 
General, and brought his cape up under the lamp for 
examination. 

The uniforms of three armies were at the table — 
the French, the Belgian and the English. It was pos- 
sible to compare them under the light of a single 
lamp. 

The General's cloak, in spite of my criticism, was 
the heaviest of the three. But all of them seemed 
excellent. The material was like felt in body, but 
much softer. 

All of the officers were united in thinking khaki 
an excellent all-round colour. 

"The Turcos have been put into khaki," said the 
Commandant. "They disliked it at first; but their 
other costumes were too conspicuous. Now they are 
satisfied/' 

The Englishman offered the statement that Eng- 
land was supplying all of the Allies, including Russia, 
with cloth. 

Sitting round the table under the lamp, the Com- 
mandant read a postcard taken from the body of a 



160 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

dead German in the attack the night before. There 
was a photograph with it, autographed. The photo- 
graph was of the woman who had written the card. 
It began "Beloved Otto," and was signed "Your lov- 
ing wife, Hedwig." 
This is the postcard: 

"Beloved Otto: To-day your dear cards came, so 
full of anxiety for us. So that now at last I know 
that you have received my letters. I was convinced 
you had not. We have sent you so many packages of 
things you may need. Have you got any of them? 
To-day I have sent you my photograph. I wished 
to send a letter also instead of this card, but I have 
no writing paper. All week I have been busy with 
the children's clothing. We think of you always, 
dear Otto. Write to us often. Greetings from your 
Hedwig and the children." 

So she was making clothing for the children and 
sending him little packages. And Otto lay dead under 
the stars that night — dead of an ideal, which is that 
a man must leave his family and all that he loves and 
follow the beckoning finger of empire. 

"For king and country!" 

The Commandant said that when a German soldier 
surrenders he throws down his gun, takes off his hel- 
met and jerks off his shoulder straps, saying over and 
over, "Pater faniilias." Sometimes, by way of em- 
phasising that he is a family man, he holds up his 
fingers — two children or three children, whatever it 
may be. Even boys in their teens will claim huge 
families. 

I did not find it amusing after the postcard and 



LADY DECIES' STORY 161 

the photograph. I found it all very tragic and sad 
and disheartening. 

It was growing late and the General was impatient 
to be off. We had still a long journey ahead of us, 
and riding at night was not particularly safe. 

I got into the car and they bundled in after me 
the damaged pictures, the horseshoe, the piece of gar- 
goyle from the Cloth Hall and the nose of the shell. 

The orderly reported that a Zeppelin had. just 
passed overhead; but the General shrugged his shoul- 
ders. 

"They are always seeing Zeppelins," he said. "Me, 
I do not believe there is such a thing!" 

That night in my hotel, after dinner, Gertrude, Lady 
Decies, told me the following story: 

"I had only twelve hours' notice to start for the 
front. I am not a hospital nurse, but I have taken 
for several years three months each summer of spe- 
cial training. So I felt that I would be useful if I 
could get over. 

"It was November and very cold. When I got 
to Calais there was not a room to be had anywhere. 
But at the Hotel Centrale they told me I might have 
a bathroom to sleep in. 

"At the last moment a gentleman volunteered to 
exchange with me. But the next day he left, so that 
night I slept in a bathtub with a mattress in it! 

"The following day I got a train for Dunkirk. On 
the way the train was wrecked. Several coaches left 
the track, and there was nothing to do but to wait 
until they were put back on. 

"I went to the British Consul at Dunkirk and asked 



162 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

him where I could be most useful. He said to go 
to the railroad station at once. 

"I went to the station. The situation there was hor- 
rible. Three doctors and seven dressers were working 
on four-hour shifts. 

"As the wounded came in only at night, that was 
when we were needed. I worked all night from that 
time on. My first night we had eleven hundred men. 
Some of them were dead when they were lifted out 
onto the stone floor of the station shed. One boy 
flung himself out of the door. I caught him as he 
fell and he died in my arms. He had diphtheria, 
as well as being wounded. 

"The station was frightfully cold, and the men 
had to be laid on the stone floors with just room for 
moving about between them. There was no heat of 
any sort. The dead were laid in rows, one on top 
of another, on cattle trucks. As fast as a man died 
they took his body away and brought in another 
wounded man. 

"Every now and then the electric lights would go 
out and leave us there in black darkness. Finally we 
got candles and lamps for emergencies. 

"We had no surgical dressings, but we had some 
iodine. The odours were fearful. Some of the men 
had not had their clothes off for five weeks. Their 
garments were like boards. It was almost impossible 
to cut through them. And underneath they were 
coated with vermin. Their bodies were black with 
them frequently. 

"In many cases the wounds were green through lack 
of attention. One man, I remember, had fifteen. 
The first two nights I was there we had no water, 
which made it terrible. There was a pump outside, 



LADY DECIES' STORY 163 

but the water was bad. At last we had a little stove 
set up, and I got some kettles and jugs and boiled 
the water. 

"We were obliged to throw the bandages in a heap 
on the floor, and night after night we walked about 
in blood. My clothing and stockings were stained 
with blood to my knees. 

"After the first five nights I kept no record of 
the number of wounded; but the first night we had 
eleven hundred; the second night, nine hundred; the 
third night, seven hundred and fifty ; the fourth night, 
two thousand ; the fifth night, fifteen hundred. 

"The men who were working at the station were 
English Quakers. They were splendid men. I have 
never known more heroic work than they did, and the 
cure was a splendid fellow. There was nothing too 
menial for him to do. He was everywhere. ,, 

This is the story she told me that night, in her 
own words. I have not revised it. Better than any- 
thing I know it tells of conditions as they actually 
existed during the hard fighting of the first autumn 
of the war, and as in the very nature of things they 
must exist again whenever either side undertakes an 
offensive. 

It becomes a little wearying, sometimes, this con- 
stant cry of horrors, the ever-recurring demands on 
America's pocketbook for supplies, for dressings, for 
money to buy the thousands of things that are needed. 

Read Lady Decies' account again, and try to place 
your own son on that stone floor on the station plat- 
form. Think of that wounded boy, sitting for hours 
in a train, and choking to death with diphtheria. 

This is the thing we call war. 



CHAPTER XV 
RUNNING THE BLOCKADE 



From My Journal written during an attack of in- 
fluenza at the Gare Maritime in Calais: 

AST night I left England on the first boat to 
-" cross the Channel after the blockade. I left 
London at midnight, with the usual formality of being 
searched by Scotland Yard detectives. The train was 
empty and very cold. 

"At half -past two in the morning we reached 
Folkestone. I was quite alone, and as I stood shiver- 
ing on the quay waiting to have my papers examined 
a cold wind from the harbour and a thin spray of 
rain made the situation wretched. At last I con- 
fronted the inspector, and was told that under the 
new regulations I should have had my Red Cross card 
viseed in Paris. It was given back to me with a shrug, 
but my passport was stamped. 

"There were four men round the table. My papers 
and I were inspected by each of the four in turn. 
At last I was through. But to my disgust I found 
I was not to be allowed on the Calais boat. There 
was one going to Boulogne and carrying passengers, 
but Calais was closed up tight, except to troops and 
officers. 

"I looked at the Boulogne boat. It was well lighted 

164 



RUNNING THE BLOCKADE 165 

and cheerful. Those few people who had come down 
from London on the train were already settling them- 
selves for the crossing. They were on their way to 
Paris and peace. 

"I did not want Paris and certainly I did not want 
peace. I had telegraphed to Dunkirk and expected 
a military car to meet me at Calais. Once across, I 
knew I could neither telegraph nor telephone to Dun- 
kirk, all lines of communication being closed to the 
public. I felt that I might be going to be ill. I would 
not be ill in Boulogne. 

"At the end of the quay, dark and sinister, loomed 
the Calais boat. I had one moment of indecision. 
Then I picked up my suitcase and started toward it 
in the rain. Luckily the gangway was out. I boarded 
the boat with as much assurance as I could muster, 
and was at once accosted by the chief officer. 

"I produced my papers. Some of them were very 
impressive. There were letters from the French Am- 
bassador in London, Monsieur Cambon, to leading 
French generals. There was a letter to Sir John 
French and another letter expediting me through the 
customs, but unluckily the customs at Boulogne. 

"They left him cold. I threw myself on his mercy. 
He apologised, but continued firm. The Boulogne 
boat drew in its gangway. I mentioned this, and 
that, so to speak, I had burned my Boulogne gang- 
way behind me. I said I had just had an interview 
with Mr. Winston Churchill, and that I felt sure the 
First Lord of the Admiralty would not approve of my 
standing there arguing when I was threatened with 
influenza. He acted as though he had never heard 
of the First Lord. 

"At last he was called away. So I went into a 



166 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

deck cabin, and closed and bolted the door. I re- 
member that, and that I put a life preserver over my 
feet, in case of a submarine, and my fur coat over the 
rest of me, because of a chill. And that is all I do re- 
member, until this morning in a grey, rainy dawn 
I opened the door to find that we were entering the 
harbour of Calais. If the officers of the boat were 
surprised to see me emerge they concealed it. No 
doubt they knew that with Calais under military law 
I could hardly slip through the fingers of the police. 

"This morning I have a mild attack of what the 
English call 'flu.' I am still at the hotel in Calais. 
I have breakfasted to the extent of hot coffee, have 
taken three different kinds of influenza remedies, and 
am now waiting and aching, but at least I am in 
France. 

"If the car from Dunkirk does not come for me 
to-day I shall be deported to-night. 

"Two torpedo boats are coaling in the harbor. 
They have two large white letters which answer for 
their names. One is the BE; the other is the ER. 
As they lie side by side these tall white letters spell 
B-E-E-R. 

"I have heard an amusing thing: that the English 
have built duplicates of all their great battleships, 
building them of wood, guns and all, over the hulls 
of other vessels; and that the Germans have done 
the same thing! What would happen if one of the 
'dummy' fleets met the other? Would it be a battle 
of expletives? Would the German consonant triumph 
over the English aspirate, and both ships go down in 
a sea of language? 

"The idea is, of course, to delude submarines into 
the belief that they are sinking battleships, while the 



RUNNING THE BLOCKADE 167 

real dreadnoughts are somewhere else — pure strategy, 
but amusing, except for the crews of these sham war 
flotillas." 

The French Ambassador in London had given me 
letters to the various generals commanding the divi- 
sions of the French Army. 

It was realised that America knew very little of 
what the French were doing in this great war. We 
knew, of course, that they were holding a tremendous 
battle line and that they were fighting bravely. Ru- 
mours we had heard of the great destruction done 
by the French seventy-five millimetre gun, and the 
names of numerous towns had become familiar to us 
in print, even when we could not pronounce them. 
The Paris omnibuses had gone to the front. Paris 
fashions were late in coming to us, and showed a mili- 
tary trend. For the first time the average American 
knew approximately where and what Alsace-Lorraine 
is, and that Paris has forts as well as shops and ho- 
tels. 

But what else did we know of France and its part 
in the war? What does America generally know of 
France, outside of Paris? Very little. Since my re- 
turn, almost the only question I have been asked about 
France is: "Is Paris greatly changed?'' 

Yet America owes much to her great sister repub- 
lic; much encouragement in the arts, in literature, in 
research. For France has always extended a kindly 
hand and a splendid welcome to gifted and artistic 
Americans. But her encouragement neither begins 
nor ends there. 

It was in France that American statesmen received 
the support that enabled them to rear the new re- 



168 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

public on strong and sturdy foundations. It is curi- 
ous to think of that France of Louis the Sixteenth, 
with its every tradition opposed to the democracy 
for which America was contending, sending the very 
flower of her chivalry to assist the new republic. It 
is amazing to remember that when France was in a 
deplorable condition financially it was yet found 
possible to lend America six million dollars, and 
to exempt us from the payment of interest for a i 
year. 

And the friendship of France was of the people, not . 
alone of the king, for it survived the downfall of 
the monarchy and the rise of the French Republic. 
When Benjamin Franklin died the National Assembly 
at Paris went into three days' mourning for "the great 
American. ,, 

As a matter of fact, France's help to America pre- 
cipitated her own great crisis. The Declaration of In- • 
dependence was the spark that set her ablaze. If the 
king was right in America he was utterly wrong at 
home. Lafayette went back from America convinced 
that "resistance is the most sacred of duties." 

The French adopted the American belief that lib- 
erty is the object of government, and liberty of the 
individual — that very belief which France is stand- 
ing for to-day as opposed to the nationalism of Ger- 
many. The Frenchman believes, like the American, 
that pressure should be from within out, not from 
without in. In other words, his own conscience, and 
not the arbitrary ruling of an arbitrary government, 
is his dictator. To reconcile liberty and democracy, 
then, has been France's problem, as it has been that 
of America. She has faced the same problems against 
a handicap that America has not had — the handicap 



RUNNING THE BLOCKADE 169 

of a discontented nobility. And by sheer force and 
determination France has won. 

It has been said that the French in their Revolu- 
tion were not reckless innovators. They were con- 
fiding followers. And the star they followed was 
the same star which, multiplied by the number of 
states, is the American flag to-day — Liberty. 

Because of the many ties between the two coun- 
tries, I had urged on the French Ambassador the 
necessity of letting America know a little more inti- 
mately what was being done by the French in this 
war. Since that time a certain relaxation has taken 
place along all the Allied lines. Correspondents have 
been taken out on day excursions and have cabled 
to America what they saw. But at the time I visited 
the French Army of the North there had been no 
one there. 

Those Americans who had seen the French soldier 
in times of peace had not been greatly impressed. His 
curious, bent-kneed, slouching step, so carefully taught 
him — so different from the stately progress of the 
British, for instance, but so effective in covering 
ground — his loose trousers and huge pack, all con- 
spire against the ensemble effect of French soldiers on 
the march. 

I have seen British regiments at ease, British sol- 
diers at rest and in their billets. Always they are 
smart, always they are military. A French regiment 
at ease ceases to be a part of a great machine. It 
shows, perhaps, more humanity. The men let their 
muscles sag a bit. They talk, laugh, sing if they are 
happy. They lie about in every attitude of complete 
relaxation. But at the word they fall in again. They 
take up the slack, as it were, and move on again in 



170 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

that remarkable pas de flexion that is so oddly tire- 
less. It is a difference of method; probably the best 
thing for men who are Gallic, temperamental. A more 
lethargic army is better governed probably by rule 
of thumb. 

I had crossed the Channel again to see the French 
and English lines. On my previous visit, which had 
lasted for several weeks, I had seen the Belgian Army 
at the front and the French Army in billets and on 
reserve. This time I was to see the French Army in 
action. 

The first step to that end, getting out of Calais, 
proved simple enough. The car came from Dunkirk, 
and brought passes. I took more influenza medicine, 
dressed and packed my bag. There was some little 
regret mingled with my farewell to the hotel at the 
Gare Maritime. I had had there a private bath, with 
a porcelain tub. More than that, the tub had been 
made in my home city. It was, I knew, my last 
glimpse of a porcelain tub, probably of any tub, for 
some time. There were bath towels also. I wondered 
if I would ever see a bath towel again. I left a cake 
of soap in that bathroom. I can picture its next oc- 
cupant walking in, calm and deliberate, and then his 
eye suddenly falling on a cake of soap. I can picture 
his stare, his incredulity. I can see him rushing to 
the corridor and ringing the fire bell and calling the 
other guests and the strangers without the gates, and 
the boot boy in an apron, to come and see that cake 
of soap. 

But not the management. They would take it 
away. 

The car which came for me had been at the front 
all night. It was rilled inside and out with mud, 



RUNNING THE BLOCKADE 171 

so that it was necessary to cover the seat before I 
got in. Of all the cars I have ever travelled in, this 
was the most wrecked. Hardly a foot of the metal 
body was unbroken by shell or bullet hole. The wind 
shield had been torn away. Tatters of curtain 
streamed out in the wind. The mud guards were 
bent and twisted. Even in that region of wrecked 
cars people turned to look at it. 

Calais was very gay that Sunday afternoon. The 
sun was out. At the end of the drawbridge a soldier 
was exercising a captured German horse. 

Officers in scarlet and gold, in pale blue, in green 
and red, in all the picturesqueness of a Sunday back 
from the front, were decked for the public eye. They 
walked in groups or singly. There were no women 
with them. Their wives and sweethearts were far 
away. A Sunday in Calais, indifferent food at a hotel, 
a saunter in the sunlight, and then — Monday and 
war again, with the bright colours replaced by som- 
bre ones, with mud and evil odours and wretched- 
ness. 

They wandered about, smoking eternal cigarettes 
and watching the harbour, where ships were coaling, 
and where, as my car waited, the drawbridge opened 
to allow a great Norwegian merchantman to pass. 
The blockade was only two days old, but already this 
Norwegian boat had her name painted in letters ten 
feet high along each side of her hull, flanked on both 
sides by the Norwegian flag, also painted. Her crew, 
leaning over the side, surveyed the quay curiously. 
So this was war — this petulant horse with its soldier 
rider, these gay uniforms! 

It had been hoped that neutral shipping would, by 
thus indicating clearly its nationality, escape the at- 



172 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

tacks of submarines. That very ship was sunk three 
days later in the North Sea. 

Convalescent soldiers limped about on crutches; 
babies were wheeled in perambulators in the sun; a 
group of young aviators in black leather costumes 
watched a French biplane flying low. English naval 
officers from the coaling boats took shore leave and 
walked along with the free English stride. 

There were no guns; everything was gaiety and 
brightness. But for the limping soldiers, my own 
battered machine, and the ominous grey ships in the 
harbour, it might have been a carnival. 

In spite of the appearance of the machine it went 
northeast at an incredible pace, its dried mud flying 
off like missiles, through those French villages, which 
are so tidy because there is nothing to waste; where 
there is just enough and no more — no extra paper, 
no extra string, or food, or tin cans, or any of the 
litter that goes to make the disorder of a wasteful 
American town; where paper and string and tin cans 
and old boots serve their original purpose and then, 
in the course of time, become flower-pots or rag car- 
pets or soup meat, or heaven knows what ; and where, 
having fulfilled this second destiny, they go on being 
useful in feeding chickens, or repairing roads, or fer- 
tilising fields. 

For the first time on this journey I encountered 
difficulty with the sentries. My Red Cross card had 
lost its potency. A new rule had gone out that even 
a staff car might not carry a woman. Things looked 
very serious for a time. But at last we got through. 

There were many aviators out that bright day, 
going to the front, returning, or merely flying about 
taking the air. Women walked along the roads wear- 



RUNNING THE BLOCKADE 173 

ing bright-coloured silk aprons. Here and there the 
sentries had stretched great chains across the road, 
against which the car brought up sharply. And then 
at last Dunkirk again, and the royal apartment, and 
a soft bed, and — influenza. 

Two days later I started for the French lines. I 
packed a small bag, got out a fresh notebook, and, 
having received the proper passes, the start was made 
early in the morning. An officer was to take me to 
the headquarters of the French Army of the North. 
From there I was to proceed to British headquarters. 

My previous excursions from Dunkirk had all been 
made east and southeast. This new route was south. 
As far as the town of Bergues we followed the route 
by which I had gone to Ypres. Bergues, a little for- 
tified town, has been at times owned by the French, 
English, Spanish and Dutch. 

It is odd, remembering the new alignment of the 
nations, to see erected in the public square a monu- 
ment celebrating the victory of the French over the 
English in 1793, a victory which had compelled the 
British to raise the siege of Dunkirk. 

South of Bergues there was no sign of war. The 
peasants rode along the road in their high, two- 
wheeled carts with bare iron hoops over the top, hoops 
over which canvas is spread in wet weather. 

There were trees again; windmills with their great 
wings turning peacefully; walled gardens and way- 
side shrines; holly climbing over privet hedges; and 
rows of pollard willows, their early buds a reddish 
brown ; and tall Lombardy poplars, yellow-green with 
spring. 

The road stretched straight ahead, a silver line. 
Nothing could have been more peaceful, more unwar- 



174 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

like. Peasants trudged along with heavy milk cans 
hanging from wooden neck yokes, chickens flew 
squawking from the onslaught of the car. There 
were sheep here and there. 

"It is forbidden to take or kill a sheep — except in 
self-defence!" said the officer. 

And then suddenly we turned into a small town 
and came on hundreds of French omnibuses, requi- 
sitioned from all parts of France and painted a dingy 
grey. 

Out of the town again. The road rose now to Cas- 
sel, with its three windmills in a row on the top of 
a hill. We drove under an arch of trees, their trunks 
covered with moss. On each side of the highway 
peasants were ploughing in the mud — old peasants, 
bent to the plough, or very young boys, who eyed 
us without curiosity. 

Still south. But now there were motor ambulances 
and an occasional long line of motor lorries. At one 
place in a village we came on a great three-ton lorry, 
driven and manned by English Tommies. They knew 
no French and were completely lost in a foreign land. 
But they were beautifully calm. They sat on the 
driving seat and smoked pipes and derided each other, 
as in turn they struggled to make their difficulty 
known. 

"Bailleul," said the Tommies over and over, but 
they pronounced it "Berlue," and the villagers only 
laughed. 

The officer in the car explained. 

" 'Berlue,' " he said, "is — what do you Americans 
say — dotty? They are telling the villagers they want 
to go crazy!" 

So he got out and explained. Also he found out 



RUNNING THE BLOCKADE 175 

their road for them and sent them off, rather sheepish, 
but laughing. 

"I never get over the surprises of this war," said 
the officer when he returned. "Think of those boys, 
with not a word of French, taking that lorry from 
the coast to the English lines! They'll get there too. 
They always do." 

As we left the flat land toward the coast the coun- 
try grew more and more beautiful. It rolled gently 
and there were many trees. 

The white houses with their low thatched roofs, 
which ended in a bordering of red tiles, looked pros- 
perous. But there were soldiers again. We were 
approaching the war zone. 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE MAN OF YPRES 



THE sun was high when we reached the little 
town where General Foch, Commander of the 
Armies of the North, had his headquarters. It was 
not difficult to find the building. The French flag 
furled at the doorway, a gendarme at one side of 
the door and a sentry at the other, denoted the head- 
quarters of the staff. But General Foch was not 
there at the moment. He had gone to church. 

The building was near. Thinking that there might 
be a service, I decided to go also. Going up a steep 
street to where at the top stood a stone church, with 
an image of the Christ almost covered by that virgin 
vine which we call Virginia creeper, I opened the 
leather-covered door and went quietly in. 

There was no service. The building was quite 
empty. And the Commander of the Armies of the 
North, probably the greatest general the French have 
in the field to-day, was kneeling there alone. 

He never knew I had seen him. I left before he 
did. Now, as I look back, it seems to me that that 
great general on his knees alone in that little church 
is typical of the attitude of France to-day toward the 
war. 

It is a totally different attitude from the English 
— not more heroic, not braver, not more resolute to 

176 



THE MAN OF YPRES 177 

an end. But it is peculiarly reverential. The enemy- 
is on the soil of France. The French are fighting for 
their homes, for their children, for their country. 
And in this great struggle France daily, hourly, on 
its knees asks for help. 

I went to the hotel — an ancient place, very small, 
very clean, very cold and shabby. The entrance was 
through an archway into a cobble-paved courtyard, 
where on the left, under the roof of a shed, the sad- 
dles of cavalry horses and gendarmes were waiting on 
saddle trestles. Beyond, through a glazed door, was 
a long dining room, with a bare, white-scrubbed floor 
and whitewashed walls. Its white table-cloths, white 
walls and ceiling and white floor, with no hint of fire, 
although a fine snow had commenced to fall, set me 
to shivering. Even the attempt at decoration of hang- 
ing baskets, of trailing vines with strings of red pep- 
pers, was hardly cheering. 

From the window a steep, walled garden fell away, 
dreary enough under the grey sky and the snowfall. 
The same curious pale-green moss covered the trees, 
and beyond the garden wall, in a field, was a hole 
where a German aeroplane had dropped a bomb. 

Hot coffee had been ordered, and we went into a 
smaller room for it. Here there was a fire, with four 
French soldiers gathered round it. One of them was 
writing at the table. The others were having their 
palms read. 

"You have a heart line," said the palmist to one 
of them — "a heart line like a windmill!" 

I drank my coffee and listened. I could under- 
stand only a part of it, but it was eminently cheerful. 
They laughed, chaffed each other, and although my 
presence in the hotel must have caused much curi- 



178 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

osity in that land of no women, they did not stare 
at me. Indeed, it was I who did the gazing. 

After a time I was given a room. It was at the 
end of a whitewashed corridor, from which pine doors 
opened on either side into bedrooms. The corridor 
was bare of carpet, the whole upstairs freezing cold. 
There were none of the amenities. My room was at 
the end. It boasted two small windows, with a tiny 
stand between them containing a tin basin and a 
pitcher; a bed with one side of the mattress torn 
open and exposing a heterogeneous content that did 
not bear inspection ; a pine chair, a candle and a stove. 

They called it a stove. It had a coal receptacle 
that was not as large as a porridge bowl, and one 
small lump of coal, pulverized, was all it held. It was 
lighted with a handful of straw. Turn your back 
and count ten, and it was out. Across the foot of 
the bed was one of the Continental feather comforts 
which cover only one's feet and let the rest freeze. 

It was not so near the front as La Panne, but the 
windows rattled incessantly from the bombardment 
of Ypres. I glanced through one of the windows. 
The red tiles I had grown to know so well were not 
in evidence. Most of the roofs were blue, a weathered 
and mottled blue, very lovely, but, like everything 
else about the town, exceedingly cold to look at. 

Shortly after I had unpacked my few belongings I 
was presented to General Foch, not at headquarters, 
but at the house in which he was living. He came 
out himself to meet me, attended by several of his 
officers, and asked at once if I had had dejeuner. I 
had not, so he invited me to lunch with him and with 
his staff. 

Dejeuner was ready and we went in immediately. 



THE MAN OF YPRES 179 

A long table had been laid for fourteen. General 
Foch took his place at the centre of one of the long 
sides, and I was placed in the seat of honour directly 
across. As his staff is very large, only a dozen 
officers dine with him. The others, juniors in the 
service, are billeted through the town and have a sepa- 
rate mess. 

Sitting where I did I had a very good opportunity 
to see the hero of Ypres, philosopher, strategist and 
theorist, whose theories were then bearing the su- 
preme test of war. 

Erect, and of distinguished appearance, General 
Foch is a man rather past middle life, with heavy 
iron-grey hair, rather bushy grey eyebrows and a 
moustache. His eyes are grey and extremely direct. 
His speech incisive and rather rapid. 

Although some of the staff had donned the new 
French uniform of grey-blue, the general wore the 
old uniform, navy-blue, the only thing denoting his 
rank being the three dull steel stars on the embroidered 
sleeve of his tunic. 

There was little ceremony at the meal. The staff re- 
mained standing until General Foch and I were seated. 
Then they all sat down and dejeuner was immediately 
served. 

One of the staff told me later that the general is 
extremely punctilious about certain things. The staff 
is expected to be in the dining room five minutes be- 
fore meals are served. A punctual man himself, he 
expects others to be punctual. The table must al- 
ways be the epitome of neatness, the food well cooked 
and quietly served. 

Punctuality and neatness no doubt are due to his 
long military training, for General Foch has always 



180 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

been a soldier. Many of the officers of France owe 
their knowledge of strategy and tactics to his teaching 
at the licole de Guerre. 

General Foch led the conversation. Owing to the 
rapidity of his speech, it was necessary to translate 
much of it for me. We spoke, one may say, through 
a clearing house. But although he knew it was to be 
translated to me, he spoke, not to the interpreter, 
but to me, and his keen eyes watched me as I replied. 
And I did not interview General Foch. General Foch 
interviewed me. I made no pretence at speaking for 
America. I had no mission. But within my limita- 
tions I answered him as well as I could. 

"There are many ties between America and France," 
said General Foch. "We wish America to know what 
we are doing over here, to- realise that this terrible 
war was forced on us." 

I mentioned my surprise at the great length of 
the French line — more than four hundred miles. 

"You do not know that in America?" he asked, evi- 
dently surprised. 

I warned him at once not to judge the knowledge 
of America by what I myself knew, that no doubt 
many quite understood the situation. 

"But you have been very modest," I said. "We 
really have had little information about the French 
Army and what it is doing, unless more news is going 
over since I left." 

"We are more modest than the Germans, then ?" 

"You are, indeed. There are several millions of 
German-born Americans who are not likely to let 
America forget the Fatherland. There are many Ger- 
man newspapers also." 

"What is the percentage of German population?" 



THE MAN OF YPRES 181 

I told him. I think I was wrong. I think I made 
it too great. But I had not expected to be interviewed. 

"And these German newspapers, are they neutral ?" 

"Not at all. Very far from it." 

I told him what I knew of the German propaganda 
in America, and he listened intently. 

"What is its effect? Is it influencing public 
opinion?" 

"It did so undeniably for a time. But I believe 
it is not doing so much now. For one thing, Ger- 
many's methods on the sea will neutralise all her 
agents can say in her favour — that and the relaxa- 
tion of the restrictions against the press, so that some- 
thing can be known of what the Allies are doing." 

"You have known very little?" 

"Absurdly little." 

There was some feeling in my tone, and he smiled. 

"We wish to have America know the splendid spirit 
of the French Army," he said after a moment. "And 
the justice of its cause also." 

I asked him what he thought of the future. 

"There is no question about the future," he said 
with decision. "That is already settled. When the 
German advance was checked it was checked for 
good." 

"Then* you do not believe that they will make a 
further advance toward Paris ?" 

"Certainly not." 

He went on to explain the details of the battle 
of the Marne, and how in losing that battle the in- 
vading army had lost everything. 

It will do no harm to digress for a moment and 
explain exactly what the French did at the battle of 
the Marne. 



182 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

All through August the Allies fell back before the 
onward rush of the Germans. But during all that 
strategic retreat plans were being made for resum- 
ing the offensive again. This necessitated an orderly 
retreat, not a rout, with constant counter-engagements 
to keep the invaders occupied. It necessitated also 
a fixed point of retreat, to be reached by the different 
Allied armies simultaneously. 

When, on September fifth, the order for assuming 
the offensive was given, the extreme limit of the re- 
treat had not yet been reached. But the audacity of 
the German march had placed it in a position favour- 
able for attack, and at the same time extremely dan- 
gerous for the Allies and Paris if they were not 
checked. 

On the evening of September fifth General Joffre 
sent this message to all the commanders of armies: 

"The hour has come to advance at all costs, and 
do or die where you stand rather than give way." 

The French did not give way. Paris was saved 
after a colossal battle, in which more than two mil- 
lion men were engaged. The army commanded by 
General Foch was at one time driven back by over- 
whelming odds, but immediately resumed the offen- 
sive, and making a flank attack forced the Germans 
to retreat. 

Not that he mentioned his part in the battle of the 
Marne. Not that any member of his staff so much 
as intimated it. But these are things that get back. 

"How is America affected by the war?" 

I answered as best I could, telling him something 
of the paralysis it had caused in business, of the war 
tax, and of our anxiety as to the status of our ship- 
ping. 



THE MAN OF YPRES 183 

"From what I can gather from the newspapers, the 
sentiment in America is being greatly influenced by the 
endangering of American shipping." 

"Naturally. But your press endeavours to be neu- 
tral, does it not?" 

"Not particularly/ ' I admitted. "Sooner or later 
our papers become partisan. It is difficult not to. In 
this war one must take sides." 

"Certainly. One must take sides. One cannot be 
really neutral in this war. Every country is interested 
in the result, either actively now or later on, when 
the struggle is decided. One cannot be disinterested; 
one must be partisan." 

The staff echoed this. 

Having been interviewed by General Foch for some 
time, I ventured to ask him a question. So I asked, 
as I asked every general I met, if the German ad- 
vance had been merely ruthless or if it had been bar- 
baric. 

He made no direct reply, but he said : 

"You must remember that the Germans are not 
only fighting against an army, they are fighting against 
nations; trying to destroy their past, their present, 
even their future." 

"How does America feel as to the result of this 
war?" he asked. "I suppose it feels no doubt as to 
the result." 

Again I was forced to explain my own inadequacy 
to answer such a question and my total lack of au- 
thority to voice American sentiment. While I was 
confident that many Americans believed in the cause 
of the Allies, and had every confidence in the out- 
come of the war, there remained always that large 
and prosperous portion of the population, either Ger- 



184 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

man-born or of German parentage, which had no 
doubt of Germany's success. 

"It is natural, of course," he commented. "How 
many French have you in the United States?" 

I thought there were about three hundred thousand, 
and said so. 

"You treat your people so well in France," I said, 
"that few of them come to us." 

He nodded and smiled. 

"What do you think of the blockade, General 
Foch?" I said. "I have just crossed the Channel and 
it is far from comfortable." 

"Such a blockade cannot be," was his instant re- 
ply; "a blockade must be continuous to be effective. 
In a real blockade all neutral shipping must be stopped, 
and Germany cannot do this." 

One of the staff said "Bluff!" which has apparently 
been adopted into the French language, and the rest 
nodded their approval. 

Their talk moved on to aeroplanes, to shells, to 
the French artillery. General Foch considered that 
Zeppelins were useful only as air scouts, and that with 
the coming of spring, with short nights and early 
dawns, there would be no time for them to range 
far. The aeroplanes he considered much more valu- 
able. 

"One thing has impressed me," I said, "as I have 
seen various artillery duels — the number of shells used 
with comparatively small result. After towns are 
destroyed the shelling continues. I have seen a hill- 
side where no troops had been for weeks, almost en- 
tirely covered with shell holes. 

He agreed that the Germans had wasted a great 
deal of their ammunition. 



THE MAN OF YPRES 185 

Like all great commanders, he was intensely proud 
of his men and their spirit. 

"They are both cheerful and healthy," said the gen- 
eral; "splendid men. We are very proud of them. 
I am glad that America is to know something of their 
spirit, of the invincible courage and resolution of 
the French to fight in the cause of humanity and 
justice.' , 

Luncheon was over. It had been a good luncheon, 
of a mound of boiled cabbage, finely minced beef in 
the centre, of mutton cutlets and potatoes, of straw- 
berry jam, cheese and coffee. There had been a bot- 
tle of red wine on the table. A few of the staff 
took a little, diluting it with water. General Foch 
did not touch it. 

We rose. I had an impression that I had had my 
interview; but the hospitality and kindness of this 
French general were to go further. 

In the little corridor he picked up his dark-blue 
cap and we set out for official headquarters, followed 
by several of the officers. He walked rapidly, taking 
the street to give me the narrow sidewalk and going 
along with head bent against the wind. In the square, 
almost deserted, a number of staff cars had gathered, 
and lorries lumbered through. We turned to the 
left, between the sentry and the gendarme, and climb- 
ing a flight of wooden stairs were in the anteroom of 
the general's office. Here were tables covered with 
papers, telephones, maps, the usual paraphernalia of 
such rooms. We passed through a pine door, and 
there was the general's room — a bare and shabby 
room, with a large desk in front of the two windows 
that overlooked the street, a shaded lamp, more pa- 
pers and a telephone. The room had a fireplace, and 



186 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

in front of it was a fine old chair. And on the mantel- 
piece, as out of place as the chair, was a marvellous 
Louis-Ouinze clock, under glass. There were great 
maps on the walls, with the opposing battle lines shown 
to the smallest detail. General Foch drew my at- 
tention at once to the clock. 

"During the battle of the Yser," he said, "night 
and day my eyes were on that clock. Orders were 
sent. Then it was necessary to wait until they were 
carried out. It was by the clock that one could know 
what should be happening. The hours dragged. It 
was terrible." 

It must have been terrible. Everywhere I had 
heard the same story. More than any of the great 
battles of the war, more even than the battle of the 
Marne, the great fight along the Yser, from the 
twenty-first of October, 19 14, to the twelfth of No- 
vember, seems to have impressed itself in sheer horror 
on the minds of those who know its fear fulness. At 
every headquarters I have found the same feeling. 

It was General Foch's army that reenforced the 
British at that battle. The word had evidently been 
given to the Germans that at any cost they must break 
through. They hurled themselves against the British 
with unprecedented ferocity. I have told a little of 
that battle, of the frightful casualties, so great among 
the Germans that they carried their dead back and 
burned them in great pyres. The British Army was 
being steadily weakened. The Germans came steadily, 
new lines taking the place of those that were gone. 
Then the French came up, and, after days of strug- 
gle, the line held. 

General Foch opened a drawer of the desk and 
showed me, day by day, the charts of the battle. They 



THE MAN OF YPRES 187 

were bound together in a great book, and each day 
had a fresh page. The German Army was black. The 
French was red. Page after page I lived that battle, 
the black line advancing, the blue of the British waver- 
ing against overwhelming numbers and ferocity, the 
red line of the French coming up. "The Man of 
Ypres," they call General Foch, and well they may. 

"They came," said General Foch, "like the waves 
of the sea." 

It was the second time I had heard the German 
onslaught so described. 

He shut the book and sat for a moment, his head 
bent, as though in living over again that fearful time 
some of its horror had come back to him. 

At last : "I paced the floor and watched the clock,'' 
he said. 

How terrible! How much easier to take a sword 
and head a charge ! How much simpler to lead men 
to death than to send them ! There in that quiet room, 
with only the telephone and the ticking of the clock 
for company, while his staff waited outside for orders, 
this great general, this strategist on whose strategy 
hung the lives of armies, this patriot and soldier at 
whose word men went forth to die, paced the floor. 

He walked over to the clock and stood looking 
at it, his fine head erect, his hands behind him. Some 
of the tragedy of those nineteen days I caught from 
his face. 

But the line held. 

To-day, as I write this, General Foch's army in 
the North and the British are bearing the brunt of 
another great attack at Ypres.* The British have made 

*Battle of Neuve Chapelle March, 19 15. 



188 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

a gain at Neuve Chapelle, and the Germans have re- 
taliated by striking at their line, some miles farther 
north. If they break through it will be toward Ca- 
lais and the sea. Every offensive movement in this 
new warfare of trench and artillery requires a con- 
centration of reserves. To make their offensive move- 
ment the British have concentrated at Neuve Chapelle. 
The second move of this game of death has been made 
by the other side against the weakened line of the Al- 
lies. During the winter the line, in this manner, auto- 
matically straightened. But what will happen now? 

One thing we know: General Foch will send out 
his brave men, and, having sent them, will watch the 
Louis-Quinze clock and wait. And other great gen- 
erals will send out their men, and wait also. There 
will be more charts, and every fresh line of black or 
blue or red or Belgian yellow will mean a thousand 
deaths, ten thousand deaths. 

They are fighting to-day at Ypres. I have seen 
that flat and muddy battlefield. I have talked with 
the men, have stood by the batteries as they fired. 
How many of the boys I watched playing prisoners' 
base round their guns in the intervals of firing are 
there to-day? How many remain of that little com- 
pany of soldiers who gave three cheers for me be- 
cause I was the only woman they had seen for 
months? How many of the officers who shrugged 
their shoulders when I spoke of danger have gone 
down to death? 

Outside the window where I am writing this, 
Fifth Avenue, New York, has just left its churches 
and is flaunting its spring finery in the sun. Across 
the sea, such a little way as measured by time, peo- 
ple are in the churches also. The light comes through 



THE MAN OF YPRES 189 

the ancient, stained-glass windows and falls, not on 
spring finery, not on orchids and gardenias, but on 
thousands of tiny candles burning before the shrine 
of the Mother of Pity. 

It is so near. And it is so terrible. How can we 
play? How can we think of anything else? But 
for the grace of God, your son and mine lying there 
in the spring sunlight on the muddy battlefield of 
Ypres ! 



CHAPTER XVII 
IN THE LINE OF THE "MITRAILLEUSE' 



WAS taken to see the battlefield of Ypres by 
■*- Captain Boisseau, of the French War Academy, 
and Lieutenant Rene Puaux, of the staff of General 
Foch. It was a bright and sunny day, with a cold 
wind, however, that set the water in the wayside 
ditches to rippling. 

All the night before I had wakened at intervals 
to heavy cannonading and the sharp cracking of 
mitrailleuse. We were well behind the line, but the 
wind was coming from the direction of the battle- 
field. 

The start was made from in front of General Foch's 
headquarters. He himself put me in the car, and 
bowed an au revoir. 

"You will see," he said, "the French soldier in the 
field, and you will see him cheerful and well. You 
will find him full also of invincible courage and reso- 
lution." 

And all that he had said, I found. I found the 
French soldiers smiling and cheerful and ruddy in 
the most wretched of billets. I found them firing 
at the enemy, still cheerful, but with a coolness of 
courage that made my own shaking nerves steady 
themselves. 

To-day, when that very part of the line I visited is, 

190 



IN THE LINE OF THE "MITRAILLEUSE" 191 

as was expected when I was there, bearing the brunt 
of the German attack in the most furious fighting of 
the war, I wonder, of those French soldiers who 
crowded round to see the first woman they had ber 
held for months, how many are lying on that muddy 
battlefield? What has happened on that road, 
guarded by buried quick-firers, that stretched to the 
German trenches beyond the poplar trees? Did the 
"rabbit trap" do its work? Only for a time, I think, 
for was it not there that the Germans broke through ? 
Did the Germans find and silence that concealed bat- 
tery of seventy-five-millimetre guns under its imita- 
tion hedge? Who was in the tree lookout as the en- 
emy swarmed across, and did he get away ? 

Except for the constant road repairing there was 
little to see during the first part of the journey. Here 
in a flat field, well beyond the danger zone, some of 
the new British Army was digging practice trenches 
in the mud. Their tidy uniforms were caked with 
dirt, their faces earnest and flushed. At last the long 
training at Salisbury Plain was over, and here they 
were, if not at the front, within hearing distance of 
the guns. Any day now a bit of luck would move 
them forward, and there would be something doing. 

By now, no doubt, they have been moved up and 
there has been something doing. Poor lads! I 
watched them until even their khaki-coloured tents 
had faded into the haze. The tall, blonde, young 
officer, Lieutenant Puaux, pointed out to me a de- 
tachment of Belgian soldiers mending roads. As our 
car passed they leaned on their spades and looked 
after us. 

"Belgian carabineers," he said. "They did some of 
the most heroic work of the war last summer and 



192 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

autumn. They were decorated by the King. Now 
they are worn out and they mend roads!" 

For — and this I had to learn — a man may not fight 
always, even although he escapes actual injury. It is 
the greatest problem of commanding generals that they 
must be always moving forward fresh troops. The 
human element counts for much in any army. Nerves 
go after a time. The constant noise of the guns has 
sent men mad. 

More than ever, in this new warfare, is the problem 
serious. For days the men suffer not only the enemy's 
guns but the roar of their own batteries from behind 
them. They cannot always tell which side they hear. 
Their tortured ears ache with listening. And when 
they charge and capture an outpost it is not always 
certain that they will escape their own guns. In one 
tragic instance that I know of this happened. 

The route was by way of Poperinghe, with its nar- 
row, crowded streets, its fresh troops just arrived and 
waiting patiently, heavy packs beside them, for orders. 
In Poperinghe are found all the troops of the Allies : 
British, Belgian, French, Hindus, Cingalese, Algerians, 
Moroccans. Its streets are a series of colourful pic- 
tures, of quaint uniforms, of a babel of tongues, of 
that minor confusion that is order on a great scale. 
The inevitable guns rumbled along with six horses and 
three drivers : a lead driver, a centre driver and wheel 
driver. Unlike the British guns, there are generally 
no gunners with the guns, but only an officer or two. 
The gunners go ahead on foot. Lines of hussars rode 
by, making their way slowly round a train of British 
Red-Cross ambulances. 

At Elverdingue I was to see the men in their bill- 
ets. Elverdingue was another Poperinghe — the same 



IN THE LINE OF THE "MITRAILLEUSE" 193 

crowds of soldiers, the same confusion, only perhaps 
more emphasised, for Elverdingue is very near the 
front, between Poperinghe and Ypres and a little to 
the north, where the line that curves out about Ypres 
bends back again. 

More guns, more hussars. It was difficult to walk 
across the narrow streets. We watched our chance and 
broke through at last, going into a house at random. 
As each house had soldiers billeted in it, it was certain 
we would find some, and I was to see not selected 
quarters but billets chosen at random. Through a 
narrow, whitewashed centre hall, with men in the 
rooms on either side, and through a muddy kitchen, 
where the usual family was huddled round a stove, we 
went into a tiny, brick-paved yard. Here was a shed, 
a roof only, which still held what remained of the 
winter's supply of coal. 

Two soldiers were cooking there. Their tiny fire 
of sticks was built against a brick wall, and on it was 
a large can of stewing meat. One of the cooks — they 
were company cooks — was watching the kettle and 
paring potatoes in a basket. The other was reading a 
letter aloud. As the officers entered the men rose and 
saluted, their bright eyes taking in this curious party, 
which included, of all things, a woman! 

"When did you get in from the trenches?" one of 
the officers asked. 

"At two o'clock this morning, Monsieur le Capi- 
taine." 

"And you have not slept?" 

"But no. The men must eat. We have cooked ever 
since we returned." 

Further questioning elicited the facts that he would 
sleep when his company was fed, that he was twenty- 



194 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

two years old, and that — this not by questions but by 
investigation — he was sheltered against the cold by a 
large knitted muffler, an overcoat, a coat, a green 
sweater, a flannel shirt and an undershirt. Under his 
blue trousers he wore also the red ones of an old uni- 
form, the red showing through numerous rents and 
holes. 

"You have a letter, comrade!" said the Lieutenant 
to the other man. 

"From my family/' was the somewnai sheepis~ 
reply. 

Round the doorway other soldiers had gathered to 
see what was occurring. They came, yawning with 
sleep, from the straw they had been sleeping on, or 
drifted in from the streets, where they had been 
smoking in the sun. They were tme republicans, those 
French soldiers. They saluted the officers without sub- 
servience, but as man to man. And through a break 
in the crowd a new arrival was shoved forward. He 
came, smiling uneasily. 

"He has the new uniform," I was informed, and he 
must turn round to show me how he looked in it. 

We went across the street and through an alleyway 
to an open place where stood an old coach house. 
Here were more men, newly in from the front. The 
coach house was a ruin, far from weather-proof and 
floored with wet and muddy straw. One could hardly 
believe that that straw had been dry and fresh when 
the troops came in at dawn. It was hideous now, 
from the filth of the trenches. The men were awake, 
and being advised of our coming by an anxious and 
loud-voiced member of the company who ran ahead, 
they were on their feet, while others, w T ho had been 
sleeping in the loft, were on their way down the ladder. 



IN THE LINE OF THE "MITRAILLEUSE" 195 

"They have been in a very bad place all night," said 
the Captain. "They are glad to be here, they say." 

"You mean that they have been in a dangerous 
place?" 

The men were laughing among themselves and push- 
ing forward one of their number. Urged by their 
rapid French, he held out his cap to me. It had been 
badly torn by a German bullet. Encouraged by his 
example, another held out his cap. The crown had 
been torn almost out of it. 

"You see," said Captain Boisseau, "it was not a 
comfortable night. But they are here, and they are 
content." 

I could understand it, of course, but "here" seemed 
so pitifully poor a place — a wet and cold and dirty 
coach house, open to all the winds that blew; before 
it a courtyard stabling army horses that stood to the 
fetlocks in mud. For food they had what the boy of 
twenty-two or other cooks like him were preparing 
over tiny fires built against brick walls. But they were 
alive, and there were letters from home, and before 
very long they expected to drive the Germans back in 
one of those glorious charges so dear to the French 
heart. They were here, and they were content. 

More sheds, more small fires, more paring of pota- 
toes and onions and simmering of stews. The meal 
of the day was in preparation and its odours were 
savoury. In one shed I photographed the cook, paring 
potatoes with a knife that looked as though it belonged 
on the end of a bayonet. And here I was lined up by 
the fire and the cook — and the knife — and my picture 
taken. It has not yet reached me. Perhaps it went by 
way of England, and was deleted by the censor as 
showing munitions of war ! 



196 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

From Elverdingue the road led north and west, fol- 
lowing the curves of the trenches. We went through 
Woesten, where on the day before a dramatic incident 
had taken place. Although the town was close to the 
battlefield and its church in plain view from the Ger- 
man lines, it had escaped bombardment. But one Sun- 
day morning a shot was fired. The shell went through 
the roof of the church just above the altar, fell and 
exploded, killing the priest as he knelt. The hole in 
the roof of the building bore mute evidence to this 
tragedy. It was a small hole, for the shell exploded 
inside the building. When I saw it a half dozen planks 
had been nailed over it to keep out the rain. 

There were trees outside Woesten, more trees than 
I had been accustomed to nearer the sea. Here and 
there a troop of cavalry horses was corralled in a 
grove ; shaggy horses, not so large as the English ones. 
They were confined by the simple expedient of stretch- 
ing a rope from tree to tree in a large circle. 

"French horses," I said, "always look to me so small 
and light compared with English horses.' , 

Then a horse moved about, and on its shaggy 
flank showed plainly the mark of a Western branding 
iron! They were American cow ponies from the 
plains. 

"There are more than a hundred thousand American 
horses here," observed the Lieutenant. "They are very 
good horses." 

Later on I stopped to stroke the soft nose of a 
black horse as it stood trembling near a battery of 
heavy guns that was firing steadily. It was American 
too. On its flank there was a Western brand. I gave 
it an additional caress, and talked a little American 
into one of its nervous, silky ears. We were both far 



IN THE LINE OF THE "MITRAILLEUSE" 197 

from home, a trifle bewildered, a bit uneasy and 
frightened. 

And now it was the battlefield — the flat, muddy 
plain of Ypres. On the right bodies of men, sheltered 
by intervening groves and hedges, moved about. Dis- 
patch riders on motor cycles flew along the roads, and 
over the roof of a deserted farmhouse an observation 
balloon swung in the wind. Beyond the hedges and 
the grove lay the trenches, and beyond them again 
German batteries were growling. Their shells, how- 
ever, were not bursting anywhere near us. 

The balloon was descending. I asked permission to 
go up in it, but when I saw it near at hand I withdrew 
the request. It had no basket, like the ones I had seen 
before, but instead the observers, two of them, sat 
astride a horizontal bar. 

The English balloons have a basket beneath, I am 
told. One English airship man told me that to be sent 
up in a stationary balloon was the greatest penalty a 
man could be asked to pay. The balloon jerks at the 
end of its rope like a runaway calf, and "the resulting 
nausea makes sea-sickness seem like a trip to the 
Crystal Palace." 

So I did not go up in that observation balloon on 
the field of Ypres. We got out of the car, and 
trudged after the balloon as it was carried to its new 
position by many soldiers. We stood by as it rose 
again above the tree tops, the rope and the telephone 
wire hanging beneath it. But what the observers saw 
that afternoon from their horizontal bar I do not yet 
know — trenches, of course. But trenches are interest- 
ing in this war only when their occupants have left 
them and started forward. Batteries and ammunition 
trains, probably, the latter crawling along the enemy's 



198 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

roads. But both of these can be better and more easily 
located by aeroplanes. 

The usefulness of the captive balloon in this war is 
doubtful. It serves, at the best, to take the place of 
an elevation of land in this flat country, is a large and 
tempting target, and can serve only on very clear days 
when there is no ground mist — a difficult thing to 
achieve in Flanders. 

We were getting closer to the front all the time. As 
the automobile jolted on, drawing out for transports, 
for ambulances and ammunition wagons, the two 
French officers spoke of the heroism of their men. 
They told me, one after the other, of brave deeds that 
had come under their own observation. 

"The French common soldier is exceedingly brave — 
quite reckless," one of them said. "Take, for instance, 
the case, a day or so ago, of Philibert Musillat, of the 
1 68th Infantry. We had captured a communication 
trench from the Germans and he was at the end of it, 
alone. There was a renewal of the German attack, 
and they came at him along the trench. He refused to 
retreat. His comrades behind handed him loaded 
rifles, and he killed every German that appeared until 
they lay in a heap. The Germans threw bombs at him, 
but he would not move. He stood there for more than 
twelve hours !" 

There were many such stories, such as that of the 
boys of the senior class of the military school of St. 
Cyr, who took, the day of the beginning of the war, 
an oath to put on gala dress, white gloves and a red, 
white and blue plume, when they had the honour to 
receive the first order to charge. 

They did it, too. Theatrical? Isn't it just splendid- 
ly boyish? They did it, you see. The first of them to 



IN THE LINE OF THE "MITRAILLEUSE" 199 

die, a young sub-lieutenant, was found afterward, his 
red, white and blue plume trampled in the mud, his 
brave white gloves stained with his own hot young 
blood. Another of these St. Cyr boys, shot in the 
face hideously and unable to speak, stood still under 
fire and wrote his orders to his men. It was his first 
day under fire. 

A boy fell injured between the barbed wire in front 
of his trench and the enemy, in that No Man's Land 
of so many tragedies. His comrades, afraid of hitting 
him, stopped firing. 

"Go on!" he called to them. "No matter about me. 
Shoot at them !" 

So they fired, and he writhed for a moment. 

"I got one of yours that time!" he said. 

The Germans retired, but the boy still lay on the 
ground, beyond reach. He ceased moving, and they 
thought he was dead. One may believe that they 
hoped he was dead. It was more merciful than the 
slow dying of No Man's Land. But after a time he 
raised his head. 

"Look out," he called. "They are coming again. 
They are almost up to me!" 

That is all of that story. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION 



THE car stopped. We were at the wireless an 
telephone headquarters for the French Army 
of the North. It was a low brick building, and out- 
side, just off the roadway, was a high van full of : 
telephone instruments. That it was moved from one : 
place to another was shown when, later in the day, 
returning by that route, we found the van had disap- 
peared. 

It was two o'clock. The German wireless from Ber- 
lin had just come in. At three the receiving station i 
would hear from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It was? 
curious to stand there and watch the operator, receiv- 
ers on his ears, picking up the German message. It was • 
curious to think that, just a little way over there, 
across a field or two, the German operator was doing 
the same thing, and that in an hour he would be 
receiving the French message. 

All the batteries of the army corps are — or were — 
controlled from that little station. The colonel in 
charge came out to greet us, and to him Captain 
Boisseau gave General Foch's request to show me 
batteries in action. 

The colonel was very willing. He would go with 
us himself. I conquered a strong desire to stand with 
the telephone building between me and the German 

200 



FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION 201 

lines, now so near, and looked about. A French 
aeroplane was overhead, but there was little bustle and 
activity along the road. It is a curious fact in this war 
that the nearer one is to the front the quieter things 
become. Three or four miles behind there is bustle and 
movement. A mile behind, and only an occasional dis- 
patch rider, a few men mending roads, an officer's car, 
a few horses tethered in a wood, a broken gun car- 
riage, a horse being shod behind a wall, a soldier on 
a lookout platform in a tree, thickets and hedges 
that on occasion spout fire and death — that is the 
country round Ypres and just behind the line, in day- 
light. 

We were between Ypres and the Allied line, in that 
arc which the Germans are, as I write, trying so hard 
to break through. The papers say that they are shell- 
ing Ypres and that it is burning. They were shelling 
it that day also. But now, as then, I cannot believe it 
is burning. There was nothing left to burn. 

While arrangements were being made to visit the 
batteries, Lieutenant Puaux explained to me a method 
they had established at that point for measuring the 
altitude of hostile aeroplanes for the guns. 

"At some anti-aircraft batteries,' ' he explained, 
"they have the telemeter for that purpose. But here 
there is none. So they use the system of visee laterale, 
or side sight, literally." 

He explained it all carefully to me. I understood it 
at the time, I think. 

I remember saying it was perfectly clear, and a child 
could do it, and a number of other things. But the 
system of visee laterale has gone into that part of my 
mind which contains the Latin irregular verbs, har- 
monies, the catechism and answers to riddles. 



202 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

There is a curious feeling that comes with the firing 
of a large battery at an unseen enemy. One moment 
the air is still; there is a peaceful plain round. The 
sun shines, and heavy cart horses, drawing a wagon 
filled with stones for repairing a road, are moving for- 
ward steadily, their heads down, their feet sinking 
deep in the mud. The next moment hell breaks loose. 
The great guns stand with smoking jaws. The message j 
of death has gone forth. Over beyond the field and ] 
that narrow line of trees, what has happened ? A great 
noise, the furious recoiling of the guns, an upcurling 
of smoke — that is the firing of a battery. But over 
there, perhaps, one man, or twenty, or fifty men, lying ; 
still. 

So I required assurance that this battery was not 
being fired for me. I had no morbid curiosity as to 
batteries. One of the officers assured me that I need 
have no concern. Though they were firing earlier 
than had been intended, a German battery had been i 
located and it was their instructions to disable it. 

The battery had been well concealed. 

"No German aeroplane has as yet discovered it," 
explained the officer in charge. 

To tell the truth, I had not yet discovered it myself. 
We had alighted from the machine in a sea of mud. 
There was mud everywhere. 

A farmhouse to the left stood inaccessible in it. 
Down the road a few feet a tree with an observation 
platform rose out of it. A few chickens waded about 
in it. A crowd of soldiers stood at a respectful dis- 
tance and watched us. But I saw no guns. 

One of the officers stooped and picked up the cast 
shoe of a battery horse, and shaking the mud off, 
presented it to me. 



FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION 203 

"To bring you luck," he said, "and perhaps luck to 
the battery!" 

We left the road, and turning to the right made a 
floundering progress across a field to a hedge. Only 
when we were almost there did I realise that the hedge 
was the battery. 

"We built it," said the officer in charge. "We 
brought the trees and saplings and constructed it. 
Madame did not suspect?" 

Madame had not suspected. There were other 
hedges in the neighbourhood, and the artificial one had 
been well contrived. Halfway through the field the 
party paused by a curious elevation, flat, perhaps 
twenty feet across and circular. 

"The cyclone cellar!" some one said. "We will 
come here during the return fire." 

But one look down the crude steps decided me to 
brave the return fire and die in the open. The cave 
below the flat roof, turf -covered against the keen eyes 
of aeroplanes, was full of water. The officers watched 
my expression and smiled. 

And now we had reached the battery, and eager 
gunners were tearing away the trees and shrubbery 
that covered them. In an incredible space of time the 
great grey guns, sinister, potential of death, lay open 
to the bright sky. The crews gathered round, each 
man to his place. The shell was pushed home, the 
gunners held the lanyards. 

"Open your mouth wide," said the officer in charge, 
and gave the signal. 

The great steel throats were torn open. The mon- 
sters recoiled, as if aghast at what they had done. 
Their white smoke curled from the muzzles. The dull 
lorses in the road lifted their heads. 



204 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

And over there, beyond the line of poplar trees, 
what? 

One by one they fired the great guns. Then all 
together, several rounds. The air was torn with noise. 
Other batteries, far and near, took up the echo. The 
lassitude of the deadlock was broken. 

And then overhead the bursting shell of a German 
gun. The return fire had commenced ! 

I had been under fire before. The sound of a burst- 
ing shell was not a new one. But there had always 
before been a strong element of chance in my favour. 
When the Germans were shelling a town, who was I 
that a shell should pick me out to fall on or to explode 
near ? But this was different. They were firing at a 
battery, and I was beside that battery. It was all very 
well for the officer in charge to have said they had 
never located his battery. I did not believe him. I 
still doubt him. For another shell came. 

The soldiers from the farmhouse had gathered be- 
hind us in the field. I turned and looked at them. 
They were smiling. So I summoned a shaky smile 
myself and refused the hospitality of the cellar full of 
water. 

One of the troopers stepped out from the others. 

"We have just completed a small bridge," he said — 
"a bridge over the canal. Will madame do us the 
honour of walking across it? It will thus be inaugu- 
rated by the only lady at the front." 

Madame would. Madame did. But without any 
real enthusiasm. The men cheered, and another Ger- 
man shell came, and everything was merry as a mar- 
riage bell. 

They invited me to climb the ladder to the lookout 
in the tree and look at the enemy's trenches. But 



FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION 205 

under the circumstances I declined. I felt that it was 
time to move on and get hence. The honour of being 
the only woman who had got to the front at Ypres 
began to weigh heavy on me. I mentioned the passing 
of time and the condition of the roads. 

So at last I got into the car. The officers of the 
battery bowed, and the men, some fifty of them, gave 
me three rousing cheers. I think of them now, and 
there is a lump in my throat. They were so interested, 
so smiling and cheery, that bright late February after- 
noon, standing in the mud of the battlefield of Ypres, 
with German shells bursting overhead. Half of them, 
even then, had been killed or wounded. Each day 
took its toll of some of them, one way or another. 

How many of them are left to-day? The smiling 
officer, so debonair, so proud of his hidden battery, 
where is he? The tiny bridge, has it run red this 
last week ? The watchman in the tree, what did he see, 
that terrible day when the Germans got across the canal 
and charged over the flat lands? 

The Germans claim to have captured guns at or 
near this place. One thing I am sure of : This battery 
or another, it was not taken while there were men 
belonging to it to defend it. The bridge would run 
red and the water under the bridge, the muddy field 
be strewn with bodies, before those cheery, cool-eyed 
and indomitable French gunners would lose their guns. 

The car moved away, fifty feet, a hundred feet, and 
turned out to avoid an ammunition wagon, disabled in 
the road. It was fatal. We slid off into the mire and 
settled down. I looked back at the battery. A fresh 
shell was bursting high in the air. 

We sat there, interminable hours that were really 
minutes, while an orderly and the chauffeur dug us out 



206 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

with spades. We conversed of other things. But it 
was a period of uneasiness on my part. And, as if to 
point the lesson and adorn the tale, away to the left, 
rising above the plain, was the church roof with the 
hole in it — mute evidence that even the mantle of 
righteousness is no protection against a shell. 

Our course was now along a road just behind the 
trenches and paralleling them, to an anti-aircraft sta- 
tion. 

I have seen a number of anti-aircraft stations at the 
front : English ones near the coast and again south of 
Ypres; guns mounted, as was this French battery, on 
the plain of a battlefield ; isolated cannon in towers and 
on the tops of buildings and water tanks. I have 
seen them in action, firing at hostile planes. I have 
never yet seen them do any damage, but they serve a 
useful purpose in keeping the scouting machines high 
in the air, thus rendering difficult the work of the 
enemy's observer. The real weapon against the hostile 
aeroplane is another machine. Several times I have 
seen German Taubes driven off by French aviators, 
and winging a swift flight back to their lines. Not, 
one may be sure, through any lack of courage on the 
part of German aviators. They are fearless and ex- 
tremely skilful. But because they have evidently been 
instructed to conserve their machines. 

I had considerable curiosity as to the anti-aircraft 
batteries. How was it possible to manipulate a large 
field gun, with a target moving at a varying height, 
and at a speed velocity of, say, sixty miles an hour? 

The answer was waiting on the field just north of 
Ypres. 

A brick building by the road was evidently a store- 
house for provisions for the trenches. Unloaded in 






FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION 207 

front of it were sacks of bread, meal and provisions. 
And standing there in the sunshine was the commander 
of the field battery, Captain Mignot. A tall and 
bearded man, essentially grave, he listened while Lieu- 
tenant Puaux explained the request from General Foch 
that I see his battery. He turned and scanned the sky. 

"We regret," he said seriously, "that at the moment 
there is no aeroplane in sight. We will, however, show 
Madame everything." 

He led the way round the corner of the building to 
where a path, neatly banked, went out through the 
mud to the battery. 

"Keep to the path," said a tall sign. But there was 
no temptation to do otherwise. There must have been 
fifty acres to that field, unbroken by hedge or tree. 
As we walked out, Captain Mignot paused and pointed 
his finger up and somewhat to the right. 

"German shrapnel!" he said. True enough, little 
spherical clouds told where it had burst harmlessly. 

As cannonading had been going on steadily all the 
afternoon, no one paid any particular attention. We 
walked on in the general direction of the trenches. 

The gunners were playing prisoner's base just be- 
yond the guns. When they saw us coming the game 
ceased, and they hurried to their stations. Boys they 
were, most of them. The youth of the French troops 
had not impressed me so forcibly as had the boyishness 
of the English and the Belgians. They are not so 
young, on an average, I believe. But also the deception 
of maturity is caused by a general indifference to shav- 
ing while in the field. 

But Captain Mignot evidently had his own ideas of 
military smartness, and these lads were all clean- 
shaven. They trooped in from their game, under that 



208 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

little cloud of shrapnel smoke that still hung in the sky, 
for all the world a crowd of overheated and self-con- 
scious schoolboys receiving an unexpected visit from 
the master of the school. 

* The path ended at the battery. In the centre of the 
guns was a raised platform of wood, and a small 
shelter house for the observer or officer on duty. There 
were five guns in pits round this focal point and form- 
ing a circle. And on the platform in the centre was 
a curious instrument on a tripod. 

"The telemeter," explained Captain Mignot; "for 
obtaining the altitude of the enemy's aeroplane." 

Once again we all scanned the sky anxiously, but 
uselessly. 

"I don't care to have any one hurt," I said; "but 
if a plane is coming I wish it would come now. Or a 
Zeppelin." 

The captain's serious face lighted in a smile. 

"A Zeppelin!" he said. "We would with pleasure 
wait all the night for a Zeppelin !" 

He glanced round at the guns. Every gunner was 
in his place. We were to have a drill. 

"We will suppose," he said, "that a German aero- 
plane is approaching. To fire correctly we must first 
know its altitude. So we discover that with this." 
He placed his hand on the telemeter. "There are, you 
observe, two apertures, one for each eye. In one the 
aeroplane is seen right side up. In the other the image 
is inverted, upside down. Now! By this screw the 
images are made to approach, until one is superim- 
posed exactly over the other. Immediately on the 
lighted dial beneath is shown the altitude, in metres." 

I put my eyes to the openings, and tried to imagine 
an aeroplane overhead, manoeuvring to drop a bomb 



FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION 209 

or a dart on me while I calculated its altitude. I could 
not do it. 

Next I was shown the guns. They were the famous 
seventy-five-millimetre guns of France, transformed 
into aircraft guns by the simple expedient of installing 
them in a pit with sloping sides, so that their noses 
pointed up and out. To swing them round, so that 
they pointed readily toward any portion of the sky, a 
circular framework of planks formed a round rim to 
the pit, and on this runway, heavily greased, the muz- 
zles were swung about. 

The gun drill began. It was executed promptly, 
skilfully. There was no bungling, not a wrong motion 
or an unnecessary one, as they went through the move- 
ments of loading, sighting and firing the guns. It was 
easy to see why French artillery has won its renown. 
The training of the French artilleryman is twice as 
severe as that of the infantryman. Each man, in addi- 
tion to knowing his own work on the gun, must be 
able to do the work of all the eleven others. Casualties 
must occur, and in spite of them the work of the gun 
must go on. 

Casualties had occurred at that station. More than 
half the original battery was gone. The little shelter 
house was splintered in a hundred places. There were 
shell holes throughout the field, and the breech of one 
gun had recently been shattered and was undergoing 
repair. 

The drill was over and the gunners stood at atten- 
tion. I asked permission to photograph the battery, 
and it was cheerfully given. One after the other I 
took the guns, until I had taken four. The gunners 
waited smilingly expectant. For the last gun I found 
I had no film, but I could not let it go at that. So I 



210 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

pointed the empty camera at it and snapped the shutter. 
It would never do to show discrimination. 

Somewhere in London are all those pictures. They 
have never been sent to me. No doubt a watchful 
English government pounced on them in the mail, 
and, in connection with my name, based on them most 
unjust suspicions. They were very interesting. There 
was Captain Mignot, and the two imposing officers 
from General Foch's staff; there were smiling young 
French gunners; there was the telemeter, which cost, 
they told me, ten thousand francs, and surely deserved 
to have its picture taken, and there was one, not too 
steady, of a patch of sunny sky and a balloon-shaped 
white cloud, where another German shrapnel had burst 
overhead. 

The drill was over. We went back along the path 
toward the road. Behind the storehouse the evening 
meal was preparing in a shed. The battery was to 
have a new ration that night for a change, bacon and 
codfish. Potatoes were being pared into a great kettle 
and there was a bowl of eggs on a stand. It appeared 
to me, accustomed to the meagre ration of the Bel- 
gians, that the French were dining well that night ori 
the plains of Ypres. 

In a stable near at hand a horse whinnied. I patted 
him as I passed, and he put his head against my shoul- 
der. 

"He recognises you!" said Captain Boisseau. "He 
too is American." 

It was late afternoon by that time. The plan to 
reach the advanced trenches was frustrated by an in- 
creasing fusillade from the front. There were barbed- 
wire entanglements everywhere, and every field was 
honeycombed with trenches. One looked across the 



FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION 211 

plain and saw nothing. Then suddenly as we advanced 
great gashes cut across the fields, and in these gashes, 
although not a head was seen, were men. The firing 
was continuous. And now, going down a road, with 
a line of poplar trees at the foot and the setting sun 
behind us throwing out faint shadows far ahead, we 
saw the flash of water. It was very near. It was the 
flooded river and the canal. Beyond, eight hundred 
yards or less from where we stood, were the Germans. 
To one side the inundation made a sort of bay. 

It was along this part of the field that the Allies 
expected the German Army to make its advance when 
the spring movement commenced. And as nearly as 
can be learned from the cabled accounts that is where 
the attack was made. 

A captain from General d'Urbal's staff met us at 
the trenches, and pointed out the strategical value of 
a certain place, the certainty of a German advance, 
and the preparations that were made to meet it. 

It was odd to stand there in the growing dusk, look- 
ing across to where was the invading army, only a little 
over two thousand feet away. It was rather horrible 
to see that beautiful landscape, the untravelled road 
ending in the line of poplars, so very close, where were 
the French outposts, and the shining water just beyond, 
and talk so calmly of the death that was waiting for 
the first Germans who crossed the canal. 



CHAPTER XIX 
"I NIBBLE THEM" 



WENT into the trenches. The captain was very 
-■- proud of them. 

"They represent the latest fashion in trenches!" he 
explained, smiling faintly. 

It seemed to me that I could easily have improved 
on that latest fashion. The bottom was full of mud 
and water. Standing in the trench, I could see over 
the side by making an effort. The walls were wattled 
— that is, covered with an interlacing of fagots which 
made the sides dry. 

But it was not for that reason only that these 
trenches were called the latest fashion. They were 
divided, every fifteen feet or so, by a bulwark of earth 
about two feet thick, round which extended a commu- 
nication trench. 

"The object of dividing these trenches in this man- 
ner is to limit the havoc of shells that drop into them," 
the captain explained. "Without the earth bulwark a 
shell can kill every man in the trench. In this way it 
can kill only eight. Now stand at this end of the 
trench. What do you see?" 

What I saw was a barbed-wire entanglement, lead- 
ing into a cul-de-sac. 

"A rabbit trap!" he said. "They will come over 
the field there, and because they cannot cross the en- 

212 



"I NIBBLE THEM" 213 

tanglement they will follow it. It is built like a great 
letter V, and this is the point." 

The sun had gone down to a fiery death in the west. 
The guns were firing intermittently. Now and then 
from the poplar trees came the sharp ping of a rifle. 
The evening breeze had sprung up, ruffling the surface 
of the water, and bringing afresh that ever-present 
and hideous odour of the battlefield. Behind us the 
trenches showed signs of activity as the darkness fell. 

Suddenly the rabbit trap and the trench grew un- 
speakably loathsome and hideous to me. What a mock- 
ery, this business of killing men! No matter that 
beyond the canal there lurked the menace of a foe 
that had himself shown unspeakable barbarity and re- 
source in plotting death. No matter if the very odour 
that stank in my nostrils called loud for vengeance. 
I thought of German prisoners I had seen, German 
wounded responding so readily to kindness and a 
smile. I saw them driven across that open space, at 
the behest of frantic officers who were obeying a guid- 
ing ambition from behind. I saw them herded like 
cattle, young men and boys and the fathers of families, 
in that cruel rabbit trap and shot by men who, in 
their turn, were protecting their country and their 
homes. 

I have in my employ a German gardener. He has 
been a member of the household for years. He has 
raised, or helped to raise, the children, has planted 
the trees, and helped them, like the children, through 
their early weakness. All day long he works in the 
garden among his flowers. He coaxes and pets them, 
feeds them, moves them about in the sun. When 
guests arrive, it is Wilhelm's genial smile that greets 
them. When the small calamities of a household oc- 



214 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

cur, it is Wilhelm's philosophy that shows us how to 
meet them. 

Wilhelm was a sergeant in the German Army for 
five years. Now he is an American citizen, owning his 
own home, rearing his children to a liberty his own 
childhood never knew. 

But, save for the accident of emigration, Wilhelm 
would to-day be in the German Army. He is not 
young, but he is not old. His arms and shoulders are 
mighty. But for the accident of emigration, then, Wil- 
helm, working to-day in the sun among his Delphi- 
niums and his iris, his climbing roses and flowering 
shrubs, would be wearing the helmet of the invader; 
for his vine-covered house he would have substituted 
a trench ; for his garden pick a German rifle. 

For Wilhelm was a faithful subject of Germany 
while he remained there. He is a Socialist. He does 
not believe in war. Live and help others to live is 
his motto. But at the behest of the Kaiser, Wilhelm 
too would have gone to his appointed place. 

It was of Wilhelm then, and others of his kind, 
that I thought as I stood in the end of the new-fashion 
trench, looking at the rabbit trap. There must be many 
Wilhelms in the German Army, fathers, good citizens, 
kindly men who had no thought of a place in the sun 
except for the planting of a garden. Men who have 
followed the false gods of their country with the 
ardent blue eyes of supreme faith. 

I asked to be taken home. 

On the way to the machine we passed a mitrailleuse 
buried by the roadside. Its location brought an argu- 
ment among the officers. Strategically it would be 
valuable for a time, but there was some question as 
to its position in view of a retirement by the French. 



"I NIBBLE THEM" 215 

1 could not follow the argument. I did not try to. 
I was cold and tired, and the red sunset had turned to 
deep purple and gold. The guns had ceased. Over 
all the countryside brooded the dreadful peace of sheer 
exhaustion and weariness. And in the air, high over- 
head, a German plane sailed slowly home. 

Sentries halted us on the way back holding high 
lanterns that set the bayonets of their guns to gleam- 
ing. Faces pressed to the glass, they surveyed us 
stolidly, making sure that we were as our passes de- 
scribed us. Long lines of marching men turned out 
to let us pass. As darkness settled down, the location 
of the German line, as it encircled Ypres, was plainly 
shown by floating fusees. In every hamlet reserves 
were lining up for the trenches, dark masses of men, 
with here and there a face thrown into relief as 
a match was held to light a cigarette. Open doors 
showed warm, lamp-lit interiors and the glow of fires. 

I sat back in the car and listened while the officers 
talked together. They were speaking of General Jof- 
fre, of his great ability, of his confidence in the out- 
come of the war, and of his method, during those 
winter months when, with such steady fighting, there 
had been so little apparent movement. One of the 
officers told me that General Joff re had put his winter 
tactics in three words : 

"I nibble them." 



CHAPTER XX 
DUNKIRK: FROM MY JOURNAL 



WAKENED early this morning and went to 
-*- church — a great empty place, very cold but with 
the red light of the sanctuary lamp burning before a 
shrine. There were perhaps a dozen people there when 
I went in. Before the Mater Dolorosa two women in 
black were praying with upturned eyes. At the foot of 
the Cross crouched the tragic figure of the Mother, 
with her dead Son in her arms. Before her were these 
other mothers, praying in the light of the thin burn- 
ing candles. Far away, near the altar, seven women 
of the Society of the Holy Rosary were conducting a 
private service. They were market women, elderly, 
plain, raising to the altar faces full of faith and devo- 
tion, as they prayed for France and for their soldier- 
children. 

Here and there was a soldier or a sailor on his knees 
on a low prie-dieu, his cap dangling loose in his 
hands. Unlike the women, the lips of these men sel- 
dom moved in prayer ; they apparently gazed in word- 
less adoration at the shrine. Great and swelling 
thoughts were theirs, no doubt, kindled by that tiny 
red flame : thoughts too big for utterance or even for 
form. To go out and fight for France, to drive back 
the invaders, and, please God, to come back again — 
that was what their faces said. 

216 



DUNKIRK: FROM MY JOURNAL 217 

Other people came in, mostly women, who gathered 
silently around the Mater Dolorosa. The great empty 
Cross ; the woman and the dead Christ at the foot of 
it; the quiet, kneeling people before it; over all, as the 
services began, the silvery bell of the Mass ; the bend- 
ing backs of the priests before the altar; the sound of 
fresh, boyish voices singing in the choir — that is early 
morning service in the great Gothic church at Dunkirk. 

Onto this drab and grey and grieving picture came 
the morning sunlight, through roof -high windows of 
red and yellow and of that warm violet that glows 
like a jewel. The candles paled in the growing light. 
A sailor near me gathered up his cap, which had 
fallen unheeded to the floor, and went softly out. The 
private service was over ; the market women picked up 
their baskets and, bowing to the altar, followed the 
sailor. The great organ pleaded and cried out. I stole 
out. I was an intruder, gazing at the grief of a nation. 

It was a transformed square that I walked through 
on my way back to the hotel. It was a market morn- 
ing. All week long it had been crowded with motor 
ambulances, lorries, passing guns. Orderlies had held 
cavalry horses under the shadow of the statue in the 
centre. The fried-potato-seller's van had exuded an 
appetising odour of cooking, and had gathered round 
it crowds of marines in tam-o'-shanters with red 
woollen balls in the centre, Turcos in great bloomers, 
and the always-hungry French and Belgian troopers. 

Now all was changed. The square had become a 
village filled with canvas houses, the striped red-and^ 
white booths of the market people. War had given 
way to peace. For the clattering of accoutrements 
were substituted high-pitched haggling, the cackling of 
geese in crates, the squawks of chickens tied by the leg. 



218 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

Little boys in pink-checked gingham aprons ran about 
or stood, feet apart, staring with frank curiosity at tall 
East Indians. 

There were small and carefully cherished baskets of 
eggs and bundles of dead Belgian hares hung by the 
ears, but no other fresh meats. There was no fruit, 
no fancy bread. The vegetable sellers had only Brus- 
sels sprouts, turnips, beets and the small round pota- 
toes of the country. For war has shorn the market 
of its gaiety. Food is scarce and high. The flower 
booths are offering country laces and finding no buy- 
ers. The fruit sellers have only shrivelled apples to 
sell. 

Now, at a little after midday, the market is over. 
The canvas booths have been taken down, packed on 
small handcarts and trundled away; unsold merchan- 
dise is on its way back to the farm to wait for another 
week and another market. Already the market square 
has taken on its former martial appearance, and Dun- 
kirk is at its midday meal of rabbit and Brussels 
sprouts. 



CHAPTER XXI 
TEA WITH THE AIR-FIGHTERS 



ATER: Roland Garros, the French aviator, has 
■" just driven off a German Tanbe. They both 
circled low over the town for some time. Then the 
German machine started east with Garros in pursuit. 
They have gone out of sight. 

War is not all grey and grim and hideous. It has 
its lighter moments. The more terrible a situation 
the more keen is human nature to forget it for a time. 
Men play between shells in the trenches. London, 
suffering keenly, flocks to a comedy or a farce as a re- 
lief from strain. Wounded men, past their first agony, 
chaff each other in the hospitals. There are long hours 
behind the lines when people have tea and try to for- 
get for a little while what is happening just ahead. 

Some seven miles behind the trenches, in that vague 
"Somewhere in France," the British Army had estab- 
lished a naval air-station, where one of its dirigible 
airships was kept. In good weather the airship went 
out on reconnoissance. It was not a large airship, as 
such things go, and was formerly a training ship. Now 
it was housed in an extemporised hangar that was once 
a carwheel works, and made its ascent from a plain 
surrounded by barbed wire. 

The airship men were extremely hospitable, and I 

219 



220 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

made several visits to the station. On the day of 
which I am about to write I was taken for an exhaus- 
tive tour of the premises, beginning with the hangar 
and ending with tea. Not that it really ended with 
tea. Tea was rather a beginning, leading to all sorts 
of unexpected and surprising things. 

The airship was out when I arrived, and a group of 
young officers was watching it, a dot on the horizon 
near the front. They gave me the glasses, and I saw it 
plainly — a long, yellowish, slowly moving object that 
turned as I looked and headed back for the station. 

The group watched the sky carefully. A German 
aeroplane could wreck the airship easily. But although 
there were planes in sight none was of the familiar 
German lines. 

It came on. Now one could see the car below. A 
little closer and three dots were the men in it. On 
the sandy plain which is the landing field were wait- 
ing the men whose work it is to warp the great balloon 
into its hangar. The wind had come up and made 
landing difficult. It was necessary to make two com- 
plete revolutions over the field before coming down. 
Then the blunt yellow nose dipped abruptly. The men 
below caught the ropes, the engine was cut off, and His 
Majesty's airship, in shape and colour not unlike a 
great pig, was safely at home again and being led to 
the stable. 

"Do you want to know the bravest man in all the 
world?" one of the young officers said. "Because here 
he is. The funny thing about it is he doesn't know he 
is brave." 

That is how I met Colonel M , who is England's 

greatest airship man and who is in charge of the naval 
air station. 



TEA WITH THE AIR-FIGHTERS 221 

"If you had come a little sooner," he said, "you 
could have gone out with us." 

I was grateful but unenthusiastic. I had seen the 
officers watching the sky for German planes. I had a 
keen idea that a German aviator overhead, armed 
with a Belgian block or a bomb or a dart, could have 
ripped that yellow envelope open from stem to stern, 
and robbed American literature of one of its shining 
lights. Besides, even in times of peace I am afraid to 
look out of a third-story window. 

We made a tour of the station, which had been a 
great factory before the war began, beginning with the 
hangar in which the balloon was now safely housed. 

Entrance to the station is by means of a bridge over 
a canal. The bridge is guarded by sentries and the 
password of the day is necessary to gain admission. 
East and west along the canal are canal boats that 
have been painted grey and have guns mounted on 
them. Side by side with these gunboats are the ordi- 
nary canal boats of the region, serving as homes for 
that part of the populace which remains, with women 
knitting on the decks or hanging out lines of washing 
overhead. 

The endless traffic of a main highroad behind the 
lines passes the station day and night. Chauffeurs 
drop in to borrow petrol or to repair their cars ; visiting 
officers from other stations come to watch the airship 
perform. For England has been slow to believe in 
the airships, pinning her aeronautical faith to heavier- 
than-air machines. She has considered the great ex- 
pense for building and upkeep of each of these diri- 
gible balloons — as much as that of fifty aeroplanes — 
the necessity of providing hangars for them, and their 
vulnerability to attack, as overbalancing the advan- 



222 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

tages of long range, silence as they drift with the wind 
with engines cut off, and ability to hover over a given 
spot and thus launch aerial bombs more carefully. 

There is a friendly rivalry between the two branches 
of the air service, and so far in this war the credit ap- 
parently goes to the aeroplanes. However, until the 
war is over, and Germany definitely states what part 
her Zeppelins have had in both sea and land attacks, 
it will be impossible to make any fair comparison. 

The officers at the naval air station had their head- 
quarters in the administration building of the factory, 
a long brick building facing the road. Here in a 
long room with western windows they rested and re- 
laxed, dined and talked between their adventurous 
excursions to the lines. 

Day by day these men went out, some in the airship 
for a reconnoissance, others to man observation bal- 
loons. Day by day it was uncertain who would 
come back. 

But they were very cheerful. Officers with an hour 
to spare came up from the gunboats in the canal to 
smoke a pipe by the fire. Once in so often a woman 
came, stopping halfway her frozen journey to a soup 
kitchen or a railroad station, where she looked after 
wounded soldiers, to sit in the long room and thaw 
out; visiting officers from other parts of the front 
dropped in for a meal, sure of a welcome and a warm 
fire. As compared with the trenches, or even with the 
gunboats on the canal, the station represented cheer, 
warmth; even, after the working daylight hours, so- 
ciety. 

There were several buildings. Outside near the 
bridge was the wireless building, where an operator sat 
all the time with his receivers over his ears. Not far 



TEA WITH THE AIR-FIGHTERS 223 

frcm the main group was the great hangar of the 
airship, and to that we went first. The hangar had 
been a machine shop with a travelling crane. It had 
been partially cleared but the crane still towered at 
one end. High above it, reached by a ladder, was 
a door. 

The young captain of the airship pointed up to it. 

"My apartments!" he said. 

"Do you mean to say that you sleep here? ,, I asked. 
For the building was bitterly cold; one end had been 
knocked out to admit the airship, and the wall had 
been replaced by great curtains of sailcloth to keep 
out the wind. 

"Of course/' he replied. "I am always within call. 
There are sentries also to guard the ship. It would be 
very easy to put it out of commission." 

The construction of the great balloon was explained 
to me carefully. It was made of layer after layer of 
gold-beater's skin and contained two ballonets — a 
small ship compared to the Zeppelins, and non-rigid in 
type. 

Underneath the great cigar-shaped bag hangs an 
aluminum car which carries a crew of three men. 
The pilot sits in front at a wheel that resembles the 
driving wheel of an automobile. Just behind him is 
the observer, who also controls the wireless. The en- 
gineer is the third man. 

The wireless puzzled me. "Do you mean that 
when 3>-ou go out on scouting expeditions you can 
communicate with the station here?" I asked. 

"It is quite possible. But when the airship goes 
out a wireless van accompanies it, following along 
the roads. Messages are picked up by the van and by 
a telephone connection sent to the various batteries." 



224 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

It may be well to mention again the airship chart 
system by which the entire region is numbered and 
lettered in small squares. Black lines drawn across 
the detail map of the neighbourhood divide it into let- 
tered squares, A, B, C, and so forth, and these lettered 
squares are again subdivided into four small squares, 
i, 2, 3, 4. Thus the direction B 4, or N 2, is a very 
specific one in directing the fire of a battery. 

"Did you accomplish much to-day ?" I inquired. 

"Not as much as usual. There is a ground haze," 

replied Colonel M , who had been the observer in 

that day's flight. "Down here it is not so noticeable, 
but from above it obscures everything." 

He explained the difficulties of the airship builder, 
the expense and tendency to "pinholes" of gold-beaters' 
skin, the curious fact that chemists had so far failed 
to discover a gasproof varnish. 

"But of course," he said, "those things will come. 
The airship is the machine of the future. Its stability, 
its power to carry great weights, point to that. The 
difference between an airship and an aeroplane is the 
difference between a battleship and a submarine. Each 
has its own field of usefulness." 

All round lay great cylinders of pure hydrogen, used 
for inflating the balloon. Smoking in the hangar was 
forbidden. The incessant wind rattled the great 
canvas curtains and whistled round the rusting crane. 
From the shop next door came the hammering of 
machines, for the French Government has put the mill 
to work again. 

We left the hangar and walked past the machine 
shop. Halfway along one of its sides a tall lieutenant 
pointed to a small hole in the land, leading under the 
building. 



TEA WITH THE AIR-FIGHTERS 225 

"The French government has sent here," he said, 
"the men who are unfit for service in the army. Day 
by day, as German aeroplanes are seen overhead, the 
alarm is raised in the shop. The men are panic- 
stricken. If there are a dozen alarms they do the same 
thing. They rush out like frightened rabbits, throw 
themselves flat on the sand, and wriggle through that 
hole into a cave that they have dug underneath. It is 
hysterically funny; they all try to get in at the same 
time." 

I had hoped to see the thing happen myself. But 
when, late that afternoon, a German aeroplane actually 
flew over the station, the works had closed down for 
the day and the men were gone. It was disappoint- 
ing. 

Between the machine shop and the administration 
building is a tall water tower. On top of this are two 
observers who watch the sky day and night. An anti- 
aircraft gun is mounted there and may be swung to 
command any portion of the sky. This precaution is 
necessary, for the station has been the object of fre- 
quent attacks. The airship itself has furnished a 
tempting mark to numerous German airmen. Its best 
speed is forty miles an hour, so they are able to circle 
about it and attack it from various directions. As it 
has only two ballonets, a single shot, properly placed, 
could do it great damage. The Zeppelin, with its eight- 
een great gasbags, can suffer almost any amount of 
attack and still remain in the air. 

"Would you like to see the trenches?" said one of 
the officers, smiling. 

"Trenches? Seven miles behind the line?" 

"Trenches certainly. If the German drive breaks 
through it will come along this road." 



226 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

"But I thought you lived in the administration 
building?" 

"Some of us must hold the trenches," he said sol- 
emnly. "What are six or seven miles to the Ger- 
man Army? You should see the letters of sympathy 
we get from home!" 

So he showed me the trenches. They were ex- 
tremely nice trenches, dug out of the sand, it is true, 
but almost luxurious for all that, more like rooms 
than ditches, with board shelves and dishes on the 
shelves, egg cups and rows of shining glasses, silver 
spoons, neat little folded napkins, and, though the 
beds were on the floor, extremely tidy beds of mat- 
tresses and warm blankets. The floor was boarded 
over. There was a chair or two, and though I will 
not swear to pictures on the walls there were cer- 
tainly periodicals and books. Outside the door was 
a sort of vestibule of boards which had been built to 
keep the wind out. 

"You see!" said the young officer with twinkling 
eyes. "But of course this is war. One must put up 
with things!" 

Nevertheless it was a real trench, egg cups and rows 
of shining glasses and electric light and all. It was 
there for a purpose. In front of it was a great barbed- 
wire barricade. Strategically it commanded the main 
road over which the German Army must pass to reach 
the point it has been striving for. Only seven miles 
away along that road it was straining even then for 
the onward spring movement. Any day now, and 
that luxurious trench may be the scene of grim and 
terrible fighting. 

And, more than that, these men at the station were 
not waiting for danger to come to them. Day after 



TEA WITH THE AIR-FIGHTERS 227 

day they were engaged in the most perilous business 
of the war. 

At this station some of the queer anomalies of a 
volunteer army were to be found. So strongly 
ingrained in the heart of the British youth of good 
family is the love of country, that when he is unable 
to get his commission he goes in any capacity. I 
heard of a little chap, too small for the regular serv- 
ice, who has gone to the front as a cook ! His uncle 
sits in the House of Lords. And here, at this naval 
air station, there were young noncommissioned officers 
who were Honourables, and who were trying their 
best to live it down. One such youth was in charge 
of the great van that is the repair shop for the airship. 
Others were in charge of the wireless station. One 
met them everywhere, clear-eyed young Englishmen 
ready and willing to do anything, no matter what, 
and proving every moment of their busy day the es- 
sential democracy of the English people. 

As we went into the administration building that 
afternoon two things happened: The observers in 
the water tower reported a German aeroplane coming 
toward the station, and a young lieutenant, who had 
gone to the front in a borrowed machine, reported 
that he had broken the wind shield of the machine. 
There are plenty of German aeroplanes at that British 
airship station, but few wind shields. The aeroplane 
was ignored, but the wind shield was loudly and acri- 
moniously discussed. 

The day was cold and had turned grey and lower- 
ing. It was pleasant after our tour of the station to 
go into the long living room and sit by the fire. But 
the fire smoked. One after another those dauntless 
British officers attacked it, charged with poker, almost 



228 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

with bayonet, and retired defeated. So they closed it 
up finally with a curious curved fire screen and let it 
alone. It was ten minutes after I began looking at 
the fire screen before I recognised it for what it was — 
the hood from an automobile! 

Along one side of the wall was a piano. It had 
been brought back from a ruined house at the front. 
It was rather a poor piano and no one had any music, 
but some of the officers played a little by ear. The top 
of the piano was held up by a bandage ! It was a piano 
of German make, and the nameplate had been 
wrenched off! 

A long table filled the centre of the room. One end 
formed the press censorship bureau, for it was part 
of the province of the station to censor and stamp 
letters going out. The other end was the dining table. 
Over the fireplace on the mantel was a baby's shoe, 
a little brown shoe picked up on the street of a town 
that was being destroyed. 

Beside it lay an odd little parachute of canvas with 
a weighted letter-carrier beneath. One of the officers 
saw me examining it and presented it to me, as it 
was worn and past service. 

"Now and then," he explained, "it is impossible to 
use the wireless, for one reason or another. In that 
case a message can be dropped by means of the para- 
chute." 

I brought the message-carrier home with me. On 
its weighted canvas bag is written in ink: "Urgent! 
You are requested to forward this at once to the 
inclosed address. From His Majesty's airship ." 

The sight of the press-censor stamp reminded an 
English officer, who had lived in Belgium, of the way 
letters to and from interned Belgians have been taken 



TEA WITH THE AIR-FIGHTERS 229 

over the frontier into Holland and there dispatched. 
Men who are willing to risk their lives for money col- 
lect these letters. At one time the price was as high 
as two hundred francs for each one. When enough 
have been gathered together to make the risk worth 
while the bearer starts on his journey. He must slip 
through the sentry lines disguised as a workman, or 
perhaps by crawling through the barbed wire at the 
barrier. For fear of capture some of these bearers, 
working their way through the line at night, have 
dragged their letters behind them, so that in case of 
capture they could drop the cord and be found without 
incriminating evidence on them. For taking letters 
into Belgium the process is naturally reversed. But 
letters are sent, not to names, but to numbers. The 
bearer has a list of numbers which correspond to cer- 
tain addresses. Thus, even if he is taken and the 
letters are found on him, their intended recipients will 
not be implicated. I saw a letter which had been re- 
ceived in this way by a Belgian woman. It was ad- 
dressed simply to Number Twenty-eight. 

The fire was burning better behind its automobile 
hood. An orderly had brought in tea, white bread, 
butter, a pitcher of condensed cream, and an English 
teacake. We gathered round the tea table. War 
seemed a hundred miles away. Except for the blue 
uniforms and brass buttons of the officers who be- 
longed to the naval air service, the orderly's khaki 
and the bayonet from a gun used casually at the other 
end of the table as a paperweight, it was an ordinary 
English tea. 



CHAPTER XXII 
THE WOMEN AT THE FRONT 



T T was commencing to rain outside. The rain beat 
■■■ on the windows and made even the reluctant fire 
seem cosy. Some one had had a box of candy sent 
from home. It was brought out and presented with a 
flourish. 

"It is frightful, this life in the trenches !" said the 
young officer who passed it about. 

Shortly afterward the party was increased. An 
orderly came in and announced that an Englishwoman, 
whose automobile had broken down, was standing on 
the bridge over the canal and asked to be admitted. 
She did not know the password and the sentry refused 
to let her pass by. 

One of the officers went out and returned in a few 
moments with a small lady much wrapped in veils and 
extremely wet. She stood blinking in the doorway in 
the accustomed light. She was recognised at once as 
a well-known English novelist who is conducting a 
soup kitchen at a railroad station three miles behind 
the Belgian front. 

"A car was to have picked me up," she said, "but 
I have walked and walked and it has not come. And 
I am so cold. Is that tea? And may I come to the 
fire?" 

So they settled her comfortably, with her feet 
230 



THE WOMEN AT THE FRONT 231 

thrust out to the blaze, and gave her hot tea and 
plenty of bread and butter. 

"It is like the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in 
Wonderland," said one of the officers gaily. "When 
any fresh person drops in we just move up one place." 

The novelist sipped her tea and told me about her 
soup kitchen. 

"It is so very hard to get things to put into the 
soup," she said. "Of course I have no car, and now 
with the new law that no women are to be allowed 
in military cars I hardly know what to do." 

"Will you tell me just what you do?" I asked. 
So she told me, and later I saw her soup kitchen. 

"Men come in from the front," she explained, "in- 
jured and without food. Often they have had noth- 
ing to eat for a long time. We make soup of what- 
ever meat we can find and any vegetables, and as the 
hospital trains come in we carry it out to the men. 
They are so very grateful for it." 

That was to be an exceptional afternoon at the 
naval air-station. For hardly had the novelist been 
settled with her tea when two very attractive but 
strangely attired young women came into the room. 
They nodded to the officers, whom they knew, and 
went at once to the business which had brought them. 

"Can you lend us a car?" they asked. "Ours has 
gone off the road into the mud, and it looks as though 
it would never move again." 

That was the beginning of a very strange evening, 
almost an extraordinary evening. For while the novel- 
ist was on her way back to peace these young women 
were on their way home. 

And home to them was one room of a shattered 
house directly on the firing line. 



232 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

Much has been said about women at the front. 
As far as I know at that time there were only two 
women absolutely at the front. Nurses as a rule 
are kept miles behind the line. Here and there a soup 
kitchen, like that just spoken of, has held its cour- 
ageous place three or four miles back along the lines 
of communication. 

I have said that they were extraordinarily dressed. 
Rather they were most practically dressed. Under 
khaki-coloured leather coats these two young women 
wore khaki riding breeches with puttees and flannel 
shirts. They had worn nothing else for six months. 
They wore knitted caps on their heads, for the weather 
was extremely cold, and mittens. 

The fire was blazing high and we urged them to 
take off their outer wraps. For a reason which 
we did not understand at the time they refused. 
They sat with their leather coats buttoned to the 
throat, and coloured violently when urged to remove 
them. 

"But what are you doing here?" said one of the 
officers. "What brings you so far from P " 

They said they had had an errand, and went on 
drinking tea. 

"What sort of an errand?" a young lieutenant de- 
manded. 

They exchanged glances. 

"Shopping," they said, and took more tea. 

"Shopping, for what?" He was smilingly imper- 
tinent. 

They hesitated. Then: "For mutton," one of them 
replied. Both looked relieved. Evidently the mutton 
was an inspiration. "We have found some mutton." 
They turned to me. "It is a real festival. You have 



THE WOMEN AT THE FRONT 233 

no idea how long it is since we've had anything of the 
sort." 

"Mutton!" cried the novelist, with frankly greedy 
eyes. "It makes wonderful soup! Where can I get 
it?" 

They told her, and she stood up, tied on her seven 
veils and departed, rejoicing, in a car that had come 
for her. 

When she was gone Colonel M turned to one of 

the young women. 

"Now," he said, "out with it. What brings you 
both so far from your thriving and prosperous little 
community?" 

The irony of that was lost on me until later, when 
I discovered that the said community was a destroyed 
town with the advance line of trenches running 
through it, and that they lived in the only two whole 
rooms in the place. 

"Out with it," said the colonel, and scowled fero- 
ciously. 

Driven into a corner they were obliged to confess. 
For three hours that afternoon they had stood in a 
freezing wind on a desolate field, while King Albert 
of Belgium decorated for bravery various officers and 
— themselves. The jealously fastened coats were 
thrown open. Gleaming on the breast of each young 
woman was the star of the Order of Leopold ! 

"But why did you not tell us?" the officers de- 
manded. 

"Because," was the retort, "you have never approved 
of us ; you have always wanted us sent back to Eng- 
land. The whole British Army has objected to our 
being where we are." 

"Much good the objecting has done!" grumbled 



234 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

the officers. But in their hearts they were very 
proud. 

Originally there had been three in this valiant little 
group of young aristocrats who have proved as true 
as their brothers to the traditions of their race. The 
third one was the daughter of an earl. She, too, had 
been decorated. But she had gone to a little town 
near by a day or two before. 

"But what do you do?" I asked one of these young 
women. She was drawing on her mittens ready to 
start for their car. 

"Sick and sorry work," she said briefly. "You 
know the sort of thing. I wish you would come out 
and have dinner with us. There is to be mutton." 

I accepted promptly, but it was the situation and 
not the mutton that appealed to me. It was arranged 
that they should go ahead and set things in motion 
for the meal, and that I should follow later. 

At the door one of them turned and smiled at me. 

"They are shelling the village," she said. "You 
don't mind, do you?" 

"Not at all," I replied. And I meant it. For I was 
no longer so gun-shy as I had been earlier in the 
winter. I had got over turning pale at the slamming 
of a door. I was as terrified, perhaps, but my pride 
had come to my aid. 

It was the English officers who disapproved so 
thoroughly who told me about them when they had 
gone. 

"Of course they have no business there," they said. 
"It's a frightful responsibility to place on the men at 
that part of the line. But there's no question about 
the value of what they are doing, and if they want 
to stay they deserve to be allowed to. They go right 



THE WOMEN AT THE FRONT 235 

into the trenches, and they take care of the wounded 
until the ambulances can come up at night. Wait 
until you see their house and you will understand 
why they got those medals." 

And when I had seen their house and spent an 
evening with them I understood very well indeed. 

We gathered round the fire; conversation was des- 
ultory. Muddy and weary young officers, who had 
been at the front all day, came in and warmed them- 
selves for a moment before going up to their cold 
rooms. The owner of the broken wind shield arrived 
and was placated. Continuous relays of tea were 

coming and going. Colonel , who had been in 

an observation balloon most of the day, spoke of bal- 
loon sickness. 

"I have been in balloons of one sort and another 
for twenty years," he said. "I never overcome the 
nausea. Very few airmen do." 

I spoke to him about a recent night attack by 
German aviators. 

"It is remarkable work," he commented warmly, 
"hazardous in the extreme; and if anything goes 
wrong they cannot see where they are coming down. 
Even when they alight in their own lines, landing 
safely is difficult. They are apt to wreck their ma- 
chines." 

The mention of German aeroplanes reminded one 
of the officers of an experience he had had just behind 
the firing line. 

"I had been to the front," he said, "and a mile or 
so behind the line a German aeroplane overtook the 
automobile. He flew low, with the evident intention 
of dropping a bomb on us. The chauffeur, becoming 
excited, stalled the engine. At that moment the avia- 



236 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

tor dropped the first bomb, killing a sow and a litter 
of young pigs beside the car and breaking all the 
glass. Cranking failed to start the car. It was neces- 
sary, while the machine manoeuvred to get overhead 
again, to lift the hood of the engine, examine a spark- 
plug and then crank the car. He dropped a second 
bomb which fell behind the car and made a hole in 
the road. Then at last the engine started, and it took 
us a very short time to get out of that neighbour- 
hood." 

The car he spoke of was the car in which I had 
come out to the station. I could testify that something 
had broken the glass! 

One of the officers had just received what he said 
were official percentages of casualties in killed, 
wounded and missing among the Allies, to the first of 
February. 

The Belgian percentage was 66 2-3, the English 
33 I_ 3> an d the French 7. I have no idea how accurate 
the figures were, or his authority for them. He spoke 
of them as official. From casualties to hospitals and 
nurses was but a step. I spoke warmly of the work 
the nurses near the front were doing. But one officer 
disagreed with me, although in the main his views 
were not held by the others. 

"The nurses at the base hospitals should be changed 
every three months/' he said. "They get the worst ; 
cases there, in incredible conditions. After a time it 
tells on them. I've seen it in a number of cases. They 
grow calloused to suffering. That's the time to bring 
up a new lot." 

I think he is wrong. I have seen many hospitals, 
many nurses. If there is a change in the nurses after 
a time, it is that, like the soldiers in the field, they 






THE WOMEN AT THE FRONT 237 

develop a philosophy which carries them through their 
terrible days. "What must be, must be/' say the men 
in the trenches. "What must be, must be," say the 
nurses in the hospital. And both save themselves from 
madness. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
THE LITTLE "SICK AND SORRY" HOUSE 



A ND now it was seven o'clock, and raining. Din- 
-* *• ner was to be at eight. I had before me a drive 
of nine miles along those slippery roads. It was dark 
and foggy, with the ground mist of Flanders turning 
to a fog. The lamps of the car shining into it made 
us appear to be riding through a milky lake. Progress 
was necessarily slow. 

One of the English officers accompanied me. 

"I shall never forget the last time I dined out here, ,, 
he said as we jolted along. "There is a Belgian bat- 
tery just behind the house. All evening as we sat 
and talked I thought the battery was firing ; the house 
shook under tremendous concussion. Every now and 

then Mrs. K or Miss C would get up and 

go out, coming back a few moments later and joining 
calmly in the conversation. 

"Not until I started back did I know that we had 
been furiously bombarded, that the noise I had heard 
was shells breaking all about the place. A 'coal-box,' 
as they call them here, had fallen in the garden and 
dug a great hole !" 

"And when the young ladies went out, were they 
watching the bombs burst?" I inquired. 

"Not at all," he said. "They went out to go into 

238 






THE LITTLE "SICK AND SORRY" HOUSE 239 

the trenches to attend to the wounded. They do it all 
the time." 

"And they said nothing about it !" 

"They thought we knew. As for going into the 
trenches, that is what they are there to do.' , 

My enthusiasm for mutton began to fade. I felt 
convinced that I should not remain calm if a shell fell 
into the garden. But again, as happened many times 
during those eventful weeks at the front, my pride 
refused to allow me to turn back. And not for any- 
thing in the world would I have admitted being afraid 
to dine where those two young women were willing 
to eat and sleep and have their being day and night 
for months. 

"But of course/' I said, "they are well protected, 
even if they are at the trenches. That is, the Germans 
never get actually into the town." 

"Oh, don't they?" said the officer. "That town has 
been taken by the Germans five times and lost as 
many. A few nights ago they got over into the main 
street and there was terrific hand-to-hand fighting." 

"Where do they go at such times ?" 1 asked. 

"I never thought about it. I suppose they get into 
the cellar. But if they do it is not at all because they 
are afraid." 

We went on, until some five of the nine miles had 
been traversed. 

I have said before that the activity at the front 
commences only with the falling of night. During 
the day the zone immediately back of the trenches is 
a dead country. But at night it wakens into activity. 
Soldiers leave the trenches and fresh soldiers take 
their places, ammunition and food are brought up, 
wires broken during the day by shells are replaced, 



240 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

ambulances come up and receive their frightful bur- 
dens. 

Now we reached the zone of night activity. A 
travelling battery passed us, moving from one part of 
the line to another ; the drivers, three to each gun, sat 
stolidly on their horses, their heads dropped against 
the rain. They appeared out of the mist beside us, 
stood in full relief for a moment in the glow of the 
lamps, and were swallowed up again. 

At three miles from our destination, but only one 
mile from the German lines, it was necessary to put 
out the lamps. Our progress, which had been danger- 
ous enough before, became extremely precarious. It 
was necessary to turn out for teams and lorries, for 
guns and endless lines of soldiers, and to turn out a 
foot too far meant slipping into the mud. Two miles 
and a half from the village we turned out too far. 

There was a sickening side slip. The car turned 
over to the right at an acute angle and there remained. 
We were mired ! 

We got out. It was perfectly dark. Guns were 
still passing us, so that it was necessary to warn the 
drivers of our wrecked car. The road was full of 
shell holes, so that to step was to stumble. The Ger- 
man lines, although a mile away, seemed very near. 
Between the road and the enemy was not a tree or 
a shrub or a fence — only the line of the railway em- 
bankment which marked the Allies' trenches. To add 
to the dismalness of the situation the Germans began 
throwing the familiar magnesium lights overhead. 
The flares made the night alike beautiful and fearful. 
It was possible when one burst near to see the entire 
landscape spread out like a map) — ditches full of water, 
sodden fields, shell holes in the roads which had be- 



THE LITTLE "SICK AND SORRY" HOUSE 241 

come lakes, the long lines of poplars outlining the road 
ahead. At one time no less than twenty starlights 
hung in the air at one time. When they went out the 
inky night seemed blacker than ever. I stepped off the 
road and was almost knee-deep in mud at once. 

The battery passed, urging its tired horses to such 
speed as was possible. After it came thousands of 
men, Belgian and French mostly, on their way out of 
the trenches. 

We called for volunteers from the line to try to lift 
the car onto the road. But even with twenty men at 
the towing rope it refused to move. The men were 
obliged to give it up and run on to catch their com- 
panies. 

Between the fusees the curious shuffling of feet and 
a deeper shadow were all that told of the passage of 
. these troops. It was so dark that one could see no 
I faces. But here and there one saw the light of a ciga- 
rette. The mere hardship of walking for miles along 
those roads, paved with round stones and covered with 
mud on which their feet slipped continually, must have 
been a great one, and agonizing for feet that had been 
frosted in the water of the trenches. 

Afterward I inquired what these men carried. 
They loomed up out of the night like pack horses. I 
found that each soldier carried, in addition to his rifle 
land bayonet, a large knapsack, a canteen, a cartridge 
pouch, a brown haversack containing tobacco, soap, 
towel and food, a billy-can and a rolled blanket. 

German batteries were firing intermittently as we 
stood there. The rain poured down. I had dressed to 
go out to tea and wore my one and only good hat. 
I did the only thing that seemed possible — I took off 
that hat and put it in the automobile and let the rain 



242 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

fall on my unprotected head. The hat had to see me 
through the campaign, and my hair would stand water. 

At last an armoured car came along and pulled the 
automobile onto the road. But after a progress of 
only ten feet it lapsed again, and there remained. 

The situation was now acute. It was impossible to 
go back, and to go ahead meant to advance on foot 
along roads crowded with silent soldiers — meant go- 
ing forward, too, in a pouring rain and in high-heeled 
shoes. For that was another idiocy I had committed. 

We started on, leaving the apologetic chauffeur by 
the car. A few feet and the road, curving to the right, 
began to near the German line. Every now and then 
it was necessary to call sharply to the troops, or strug- 
gling along through the rain they would have crowded 
us off knee-deep into the mud. 

"Attention!" the officer would call sharply. And 
for a time we would have foot room. There were no 
more horses, no more guns — only men, men, men. 
Some of them had taken off their 'outer coats and put 
them shawl-fashion over their heads. But most of 
them walked stolidly on, already too wet and wretched 
to mind the rain. 

The fog had lifted. It was possible to see that 
sinister red streak that follows the firing of a gun at 
night. The rain gave a peculiar hollowness to the 
concussion. The Belgian and French batteries were 
silent. 

We seemed to have walked endless miles, and still 
there was no little town. We went over a bridge, 
and on its flat floor I stopped and rested my aching 
feet. 

"Only a little farther now," said the British officer 
cheerfully. 



THE LITTLE "SICK AND SORRY" HOUSE 243 

"How much farther?" 

"Not more than a mile." 

By way of cheering me he told me about the town 
we were approaching — how the road we were on was 
its main street, and that the advanced line of trenches 
crossed at the railroad near the foot of the street. 

"And how far from that are the German trenches ?" 
I asked nervously. 

"Not very far," he said blithely. "Near enough to 
be interesting." 

On and on. Here was a barn. 

"Is this the town?" I asked feebly. 

"Not yet. A little farther !" 

I was limping, drenched, irritable. But now and 
then the absurdity of my situation overcame me and 
I laughed. Water ran down my head and off my nose, 
trickled down my neck under my coat. I felt like a 
great sponge. And suddenly I remembered my hat. 

"I feel sure," I said, stopping still in the road, 
"that the chauffeur will go inside the car out of the 
rain and sit on my hat." 

The officer thought this very likely. I felt extremely 
bitter about it. The more I thought of it the more I 
was convinced that he was exactly the sort of chauf- 
feur who would get into a car and sit on an only hat. 

At last we came to the town — to what had been a 
town. It was a town no longer. Walls without roofs, 
roofs almost without walls. Here and there only a 
chimney standing of what had been a home ; a street 
so torn up by shells that walking was almost impossible 
— full of shell-holes that had become graves. There 
were now no lights, not even soldiers. In the silence 
our footsteps re-echoed against those desolate and 
broken walls. 



244 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

A day or two ago I happened on a description of 
this town, written by a man who had seen it at the 
time I was there. 

"The main street," he writes, "is like a great mu- 
seum of prehistoric fauna. The house roofs, denuded 
of tiles and the joists left naked, have tilted forward 
on to the sidewalks, so that they hang in mid-air like 
giant vertebrae. . . . One house only of the whole 
village of had been spared/' 

We stumbled down the street toward the trenches 
and at last stopped before a house. Through boards 
nailed across what had once been windows a few rays 
of light escaped. There was no roof ; a side wall and 
an entire corner were gone. It was the residence of 
the ladies of the decoration. 

Inside there was for a moment an illusion of en- 
tirety. The narrow corridor that ran through the cen- 
tre of the house was weatherproof. But through some 
unseen gap rushed the wind of the night. At the 
right, warm with lamplight, was the reception room, 
dining room and bedroom — one small chamber about 
twelve by fifteen! 

What a strange room it was, furnished with odds 
and ends from the shattered houses about ! A bed in 
the corner; a mattress on the floor; a piano in front 
of the shell-holed windows, a piano so badly cracked 
by shrapnel that panels of the woodwork were missing 
and keys gone ; two or three odd chairs and what had 
once been a bookcase, and in the centre a pine table 
laid for a meal. 

Mrs. K , whose uncle was a cabinet minister, 

was hurrying in with a frying-pan in her hand. 

"The mutton !" she said triumphantly, and placed 
it on the table, frying-pan and all. The other lady of 



THE LITTLE "SICK AND SORRY" HOUSE 245 

the decoration followed with the potatoes, also in the 
pan in which they had been cooked. 

We drew up our chairs, for the mutton must not be 
allowed to get cold. 

"It's quite a party, isn't it?" said one of the host- 
esses, and showed us proudly the dish of fruit on the 
centre of the table, flanked by bonbons and nuts which 
had just been sent from England. 

True, the fruit was a little old and the nuts were 
few ; but they gave the table a most festive look. 

Some one had taken off my shoes and they were 
drying by the fire, stuffed with paper to keep them in 
shape. My soaking outer garments had been carried 
to the lean-to kitchen to hang by the stove, and dry 
under the care of a soldier servant who helped 
with the cooking. I looked at him curiously. His 
predecessor had been killed in the room where he 
stood. 

The German batteries were firing, and every now 
and then from the trenches at the foot of the street 
came the sharp ping of rifles. No one paid any atten- 
tion. We were warm and sheltered from the wind. 
What if the town was being shelled and the Germans 
were only six hundred feet away? We were getting 
dry, and there was mutton for dinner. 

It was a very cheerful party — the two young ladies, 
and a third who had joined them temporarily, a doc- 
tor who was taking influenza and added little to the 
conversation, the chauffeur attached to the house, who 
was a count in ordinary times, a Belgian major who 
had come up from the trenches to have a real meal, 
and the English officer who had taken me out. 

Outside the door stood the major's Congo servant, 
a black boy who never leaves him, following with dog- 



246 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

like fidelity into the trenches and sleeping outside his 
door when the major is in billet. He had picked him 
up in the Congo years before during his active service 
there. 

The meal went on. The frying-pan was passed. 
The food was good and the talk was better. It was 
indiscriminately rapid French and English. When it 
was English I replied. When it was French I ate. 

The hostess presented me with a shrapnel case which 
had arrived that day on the doorstep. 

"If you are collecting trophies," said the major, 
"I shall get you a German sentry this evening. How 
would you like that?" 

There was a reckless twinkle in the major's eye. 
It developed that he had captured several sentries and 
liked playing the game. 

But I did not know the man. So I said: "Cer- 
tainly, it would be most interesting." 

Whereupon he rose. It took all the combined effort 
of the dinner party to induce him to sit down and 
continue his meal. He was vastly disappointed. He 
was a big man with a humorous mouth. The idea of 
bringing me a German sentry to take home as a trophy 
appealed to him. 

The meal went on. No one seemed to consider the 
circumstances extraordinary. Now and then I re- 
membered the story of the street fighting a few 
nights before. I had an idea that these people would 
keep on eating and talking English politics quite 
calmly in the event of a German charge. I wondered 
if I could live up to my reputation for courage in 
such a crisis. 



CHAPTER XXIV 
FLIGHT 



THE first part of the meal over, the hostess picked 
up a nut and threw it deftly at a door leading 
into the lean-to-kitchen. 

"Our table bell," she explained to me. And, true 
enough, a moment later the orderly appeared and car- 
ried out the plates. 

Then we had dessert, which was fruit and candy, 
and coffee. 

And all the time the guns were firing, and every 
opening of the door into the corridor brought a gale 
of wind into the room. 

Suddenly it struck me that hardly a foot of the 
plaster interior of that room was whole. The ceiling 
was riddled. So were the walls. 

"Shrapnel," said the major, following my gaze. 
"It gets worse every day." 

"I think the ceiling is going to fall," said one of 
the hostesses. 

True enough, there was a great bulge in the centre. 
But it held for that night. It may be holding now. 

Everybody took a hand at clearing the table. The 
lamp was burning low, and they filled it without put- 
ting it out. One of the things that I have always 
been taught is never to fill a lighted lamp. I explained 

247 



248 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

this to them carefully. But they were quite calm. 
It seems at the front one does a great many extraor- 
dinary things. It is part and parcel of that utter 
indifference to danger that comes with war. 

Now appeared the chauffeur, who brought the in- 
formation that the car had heen dragged out of the 
mud and towed as far as the house. 

"Towed?" I said blankly. 

"Towed, madame. There is no more petrol." 

The major suggested that we kill him at once. But 
he was a perfectly good chauffeur and young. Also 
it developed that he had not sat on my hat. So we 
let him live. 

"Never mind," said Miss C ; "we can give 

you the chauffeur's bed and he can go somewhere 
else." 

But after a time I decided that I would rather walk 
back than stay overnight in that house. For the major 
explained that at eleven o'clock the batteries behind 
the town would bombard the German trenches and 
the road behind them, along which they had informa- 
tion that an ammunition train would pass. 

"Another night in the cellar!" said some one. "That 
means no one will need any beds, for there will be a 
return lire, of course." 

"Is there no petrol to be had ?" I inquired anxiously. 

"None whatever." 

None, of course. There had been shops in the town, 
and presumably petrol and other things. But now 
there was nothing but ruined walls and piles of brick 
and mortar. However, there was a cellar. 

My feet were swollen and painful, for the walk 
had been one long agony. I was chilled, too, from 
my wetting, in spite of the fire. I sat by the tiny stove 



FLIGHT 249 



and tried to forget the prospect of a night in the cellar, 
tried to ignore the pieces of shell and shrapnel cases 
lined up on the mantelpiece, shells and shrapnel that 
had entered the house and destroyed it. 

The men smoked and talked. An officer came up 
from the trenches to smoke his after-dinner pipe, a 
bearded individual, who apologised for his muddy 
condition. He and the major played duet. They 
made a great fuss about their preparation for it. The 
stool must be so, the top of the cracked piano raised. 
They turned and bowed to us profoundly. Then sat 
down and played — chop sticks! 

But that was only the beginning. For both of them 
were accomplished musicians. The major played 
divinely. He played a Rhapsodie Hongroise, the 
Moonlight Sonata, one of the movements of the So- 
nata Appassionata. He played without notes, a bull- 
dog pipe gripped firmly in his teeth, blue clouds encir- 
cling his fair hair. Gone was the reckless soldier who 
would have taken his life in his hands for the whim 
of bringing in a German sentry. Instead there was 
a Belgian whose ruined country lay behind him, whose 
people lay dead in thousands of hideous graves, whose 
heart was torn and aching with the things that it knew 
and buried. We sat silent. His pipe died in his 
mouth; his eyes, fixed on the shell-riddled wall, grew 
sombre. When the music ceased his hands still lay 
lingeringly on the keys. And, beyond the foot of the 
street, the ominous guns of the army that had ruined 
his country crashed steadily. 

We were rather subdued when the music died away. 
But he evidently regretted having put a weight on the 
spirits of the party. He rose and brought me a charm- 
ing little water-colour sketch he had made of the bit 






250 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

of No Man's Land in front of his trench, with the 
German line beyond it. 

"By the way," he said in his exact English, "I went 
to art school in Dresden with an American named 
Reinhart. Afterward he became a great painter — 
Charles Stanley Reinhart. Is he by any chance a 
relative ?" 

"Charles Stanley Reinhart is dead," I said. "He 
was a Pittsburgher, too, but the two families are 
connected only by marriage." 

"Dead! So he is dead too! Everybody is dead. 
He — he was a very nice boy." 

Suddenly he stood up and stretched his long arms. 

"It was a long time ago," he said. "Now I go for 
the sentry." 

They caught him at the door, however, and brought 
him back. 

"But it is so simple," he protested. "No one is 
hurt. And the American lady " 

The American lady protested. 

"I don't want a German sentry," I said. "I shouldn't 
know what to do with a German sentry if I had one." 

So he sat down and explained his method to me. 
I wish I could tell his method here. It sounded so 
easy. Evidently it was a safety-valve, during that 
long wait of the deadlock, for his impetuous tempera- 
ment. One could picture him sitting in his trench 
day after day among the soldiers who adored him, 
making little water-colour sketches and smoking his 
bulldog pipe, and then suddenly, as now, rising and 
stretching his long arms and saying : 

"Well, boys, I guess I'll go out and bring one in." 

And doing it. 

I was taken for a tour of the house — up a broken 



FLIGHT 251 



staircase that hung suspended, apparently from noth- 
ing, to what had been the upper story. 

It was quite open to the sky and the rain was com- 
ing in. On the side toward the German line there was 
no wall. There were no partitions, no windows, only 
a few broken sticks of what had been furniture. And 
in one corner, partly filled with rain water, a child's 
cradle that had miraculously escaped destruction. 

Downstairs to the left of the corridor was equal 
destruction. There was one room here that, except 
for a great shell-hole and for a ceiling that was sag- 
ging and almost ready to fall, was intact. Here on 
a stand were surgical supplies, and there was a cot 
in the corner. A soldier had just left the cot. He had 
come up late in the afternoon with a nosebleed, and 
had now recovered. 

"It has been a light day," said my guide. "Some- 
times we hardly know which way to turn — when 
there is much going on, you know. Probably to-night 
we shall be extremely busy." 

We went back into the living room and I consulted 
my watch. It was half past ten o'clock. At eleven 
the bombardment was to begin! 

The conversation in the room had turned to spies. 
Always, everywhere, I found this talk of spies. It 
appeared that at night a handful of the former inhabi- 
tants of the town crept back from the fields to sleep in 
the cellars of what had been their homes, and some 
of them were under suspicion. 

"Every morning," said Miss C , "before the 

German bombardment begins, three small shells are 
sent over in quick succession. Then there is about 
fifteen minutes' wait before the real shelling. I am 
convinced that it is a signal to some one to get out." 



252 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

The officers pooh-poohed the idea. But Miss C 

stuck to her point. 

"They are getting information somehow/' she said. 
"You may laugh if you like. I am sure I am right.' ' 

Later on an officer explained to me something about 
the secret service of the war. 

"It is a war of spies," he said. "That is one reason 
for the deadlock. Every movement is reported to the 
other side and checkmated almost before it begins. 
In the eastern field of war the system is still inade- 
quate; that accounts for the great movements that 
have taken place there." 

Perhaps he is right. It sounds reasonable. I do 
not know with what authority he spoke. But certainly 
everywhere I found this talk of spies. One of the 
officers that night told of a recent experience of 
his. 

"I was in a church tower at ," he said. "There 

were three of us. We had been looking over toward 
the German lines. Suddenly I looked down into the 
street below. Some one with an electric flash was 
signalling across. It was quite distinct. All of us 
saw it. There was an answer from the German 
trenches immediately. While one of us kept watch 
on the tower the others rushed down into the street. 
There was no one there. But it is certain that that 
sort of thing goes on all the time." 

A quarter to eleven ! 

Suddenly the whole thing seemed impossible — that 
the noise at the foot of the street was really guns; 
that I should be there; that these two young women 
should live there day and night in the midst of such 
horrors. For the whole town is a graveyard. Bodies 
in numbers have been buried in shell-holes and hastily 



FLIGHT 253 



covered, or float in the stagnant water of the canal. 
Every heavy rain uncovers shallow graves in the fields, 
allowing a dead arm, part of a rotting trunk, to show. 

And now, after this lapse of time, it still seems in- 
credible. Are they still there ? Report has it that the 
Germans captured this town and held it for a time, 
only to lose it later. What happened to the little "sick 
and sorry" house during those fearful days? Did the 
German officers sit about that pine table and throw a 
nut to summon an orderly? Did they fill the lamp 
while it was lighted, and play on the cracked piano, 
and pick up shrapnel cases as they landed on the door- 
step and set them on the mantel ? 

Ten minutes to eleven! 

The chauffeur came to the door and stuck his head 
in. 

"I have found petrol in a can in an empty shed," 
he explained. "It is now possible to go." 

We went. We lost no time on the order of our 
going. The rain was over, but the fog had descended 
again. We lighted our lamps, and were curtly ordered 
by a sentry to put them out. In the moment that they 
remained alight, carefully turned away from the 
trenches, it was possible to see the hopeless condition 
of the street. 

At last we reached a compromise. One lamp we 
might have, but covered with heavy paper. It was 
very little. The car bumped ominously, sagged into 
shell-holes. 

I turned and looked back at the house. Faint rays 
of light shone through its boarded windows. A 
wounded soldier had been brought up the street and 
stood, leaning heavily on his companion, at the door- 
step. The door opened, and he was taken in. 



254 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

Good-bye, little "sick and sorry" house, with your 
laughter and tears, your friendly hands, your open 
door ! Good-bye ! 

Five minutes later, as we reached the top of the 
street, the bombardment began. 



CHAPTER XXV 
VOLUNTEERS AND PATRIOTS 



HOLD a strong brief for the English: For the 
P- English at home, restrained, earnest, determined 
and unassuming; for the English in the field, equally 
all of these things. 

The British Army has borne attacks at La Bassee 
and Ypres, positions so strategically difficult to hold 
that the Germans have concentrated their assaults at 
these points. It has borne the horrors of the retreat 
from Mons, when what the Kaiser called "General 
French's contemptible little army" was forced back by 
oncoming hosts of many times its number. It has 
fought, as the English will always fight, with un- 
equalled heroism but without heroics. 

To-day, after many months of war, the British Army 
in the field is as smart, in a military sense, as tidy — 
if it will forgive me the word — as well ordered, as 
efficiently cared for, as the German Army was in the 
beginning. Partly this is due to its splendid equip- 
ment. Mostly it is due to that fetish of the British 
soldier wherever he may be — personal neatness. 

Behind the lines he is jaunty, cheerful, smart beyond 
belief. He hates the trenches — not because they are 
dangerous or monotonous but because it is difficult to 
take a bath in them. He is four days in the trenches 
and four days out. On his days out he drills and 

255 



256 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 



marches, to get back into condition after the forced 
inaction of the trenches. And he gets his hair trimmed. 

There is something about the appearance of the 
British soldier in the field that got me by the throat. 
Perhaps because they are, in a sense, my own people, 
speaking my tongue, looking at things from a view- 
point that I could understand. That partly. But it 
was more than that. 

These men and boys are volunteers, the very flower 
of England. They march along the roads, heads well 
up, eyes ahead, thousands of them. What a tragedy 
for the country that gives them up! Who will take 
their places? — these splendid Scots with their pic- 
turesque kilts, their bare, muscular knees, their 
great shoulders; the cheery Irish, swaggering a bit 
and with a twinkle in their blue eyes ; these tall young 
English boys, showing race in every line ; these dash- 
ing Canadians, so impressive that their every appear- 
ance on a London street was certain to set the crowds 
to cheering. 

I saw them in London, and later on I saw them at 
the front. Still later I saw them again, prostrate on 
the ground, in hospital trains, on hospital ships. I 
saw mounds, too, marked with wooden crosses. 

Volunteers and patriots! A race incapable of a 
mean thing, incapable of a cruelty. A race of sports- 
men, playing this horrible game of war fairly, almost 
too honestly. A race, not of diplomats, but of gentle- 
men. 

"You will always be fools," said a captured German 
naval officer to his English captors, "and we shall never 
be gentlemen !" 

But they are not fools. It is that attitude toward 
the English that may defeat Germany in the end. 



VOLUNTEERS AND PATRIOTS 257 

Every man in the British Army to-day has counted 
the cost. He is there because he elected to be there. 
He is going to stay by until the thing is done, or he is. 
He says very little about it. He is uncomfortable if 
any one else says anything about it. He is rather mat- 
ter of fact, indeed, and nonchalant as long as things 
are being done fairly. But there is nothing calm about 
his attitude when his opponent hits below the belt. 
It was a sense of fair play, as well as humanity, that 
made England rise to the call of Belgium. It is Eng- 
land's sense of fair play that makes her soldiers and 
sailors go white with fury at the drowning of women 
and children and noncombatants ; at the unprincipled 
employment of such trickery in war as the use of 
asphyxiating gases, or at the insulting and ill-treating 
of those of their army who have been captured by the 
Germans. It is at the English, not at the French or 
the Belgians, that Germany is striking in this war. 
Her whole attitude shows it. British statesmen knew 
this from the beginning, but the people were slow to 
believe it. But escaped prisoners have told that they 
were discriminated against. I have talked with a Brit- 
ish officer who made a sensational escape from a Ger- 
man prison camp. German soldiers have called across 
to the French trenches that it was the English they 
were after. 

In his official order to his troops to advance, the 
German Emperor voiced the general sentiment. 

"It is my Royal and Imperial Command that 
you concentrate your energies, for the immediate 
present, upon one single purpose, and that is that 
you address all your skill and all the valour of 
my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous 



258 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

English and walk over General French's con- 
temptible little army. 

"Headquarters, 

"Aix-la-Chapelle, August 19th, 19 14." 

In the name of the dignity of great nations, com- 
pare that order with Lord Kitchener's instructions to 
his troops, given at the same time. 

"You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the 
King to help our French comrades against the in- 
vasion of a common enemy. You have to per- 
form a task which will need your courage, your 
energy, your patience. Remember that the hon- 
our of the British Army depends on your indi- 
vidual conduct. It will be your duty not only to 
set an example of discipline and perfect steadi- 
ness under fire, but also to maintain the most 
friendly relations with those whom you are help- 
ing in this struggle. 

"The operations in which you are engaged will, 
for the most part, take place in a friendly country, 
and you can do your own country no better serv- 
ice than in showing yourselves in France and Bel- 
gium in the true character of a British soldier. 

"Be invariably courteous, considerate, and 
kind. Never do anything likely to injure or de- 
stroy property, and always look upon looting as a 
disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a wel- 
come and to be trusted; your conduct will justify 
that welcome and that trust. Your duty cannot 
be done unless your health is sound. So keep 
constantly on your guard against any excesses. 
In this new experience you may find temptations 



VOLUNTEERS AND PATRIOTS 259 

both in wine and women. You must entirely re- 
sist both temptations, and, while treating all 
women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid 
any intimacy. 

"Do your duty bravely, 

"Fear God, 

"Honour the King. 
"(Signed), Kitchener, Field Marshal." 



CHAPTER XXVI 
A LUNCHEON AT BRITISH HEADQUARTERS 



' I A HE same high-crowned roads, with pitfalls of 
-*- mud at each side; the same lines of trees; the 
same coating of ooze, over which the car slid danger- 
ously. But a new element — khaki. 

Khaki everywhere — uniforms, tents, transports, all 
of the same hue. Skins, too, where one happens on 
the Indian troops. It is difficult to tell where their 
faces end and their yellow turbans begin. 

Except for the slightly rolling landscape and the 
khaki one might have been behind the Belgian or 
French Army. There were as usual aeroplanes over- 
head, clouds of shrapnel smoke, and not far away the 
thunder of cannonading. After a time even that 
ceased, for I was on my way to British General Head- 
quarters, well back from the front. 

I carried letters from England to Field Marshal 
Sir John French, to Colonel Brinsley Fitzgerald, aid- 
de-camp to the "Chief," as he is called, and to General 
Huguet, the liaison between the French and English 
Armies. His official title is something entirely dif- 
ferent, but the French word is apt. He is the connect- 
ing link between the English and French Armies. 

I sent these letters to headquarters, and waited in 
the small hotel for developments. The British antip- 
athy to correspondents was well known. True, there 

260 



LUNCHEON AT BRITISH HEADQUARTERS 261 

were indications that a certain relaxation was about to 
take place. Frederick Palmer in London had been 
notified that before long he would be sent across, and 
I had heard that some of the London newspapers, the 
Times and a few others, were to be allowed a day at 
the lines. 

But at the time my machine drew into that little 
French town and deposited me in front of a wretched 
inn, no correspondent had been to the British lines. 
It was terra incognita. Even London knew very little. 
It was rumoured that such part of the Canadian con- 
tingent as had left England up to that time had been 
sent to the eastern field, to Egypt or the Dardanelles. 
With the exception of Sir John French's reports and 
the "Somewhere in France" notes of "Eyewitness," a 
British officer at the front, England was taking her 
army on faith. 

And now I was there, and there frankly as a writer. 
Also I was a woman. I knew how the chivalrous 
English mind recoiled at the idea of a woman near 
the front. Their nurses were kept many miles in 
the rear. They had raised loud protests when three 
English women were permitted to stay at the front 
with the Belgian Army. 

My knees were a bit weak as I went up the steps 
and into the hotel. They would hardly arrest me. My 
letters were from very important persons indeed. But 
they could send me away with expedition and dispatch. 
I had run the Channel blockade to get there, and I did 
not wish to be sent away with expedition and dispatch. 

The hotel was cold and bare. Curious-eyed officers 
came in, stared at me and went out. A French gentle- 
man in a military cape walked round the bare room, 
spoke to the canaries in a great cage in the corner, and 



262 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

came back to where I sat with my fur coat, lap-robe 
fashion, over my knees. 

"Pardon!" he said. "Are you the Duchess of 
Sutherland ?" 

I regretted that I was not the Duchess of Suther- 
land. 

"You came just now in a large car?" 

"I did." 

"You intend to stay here for some time?" 

"I have not decided." 

"Where did you come from?" 

"I think," I said after a rather stunned pause, "that 
I shall not tell you." 

"Madame is very cautious!" 

I felt convinced that he spoke with the authority of 
the army, or of the town gendarmerie, behind him. 
But I was irritated. Besides, I had been cautioned so 
much about telling where I had been, except in general 
terms, that I was even afraid to talk in my sleep. 

"I think," I said, "that it does not really matter 
where I came from, where I am going, or what I am 
doing here." 

I expected to see him throw back his cape and ex- 
hibit a sheriff's badge, or whatever its French equiv- 
alent. But he only smiled. 

"In that case," he said cheerfully, "I shall wish you 
a good-morning." 

"Good-bye," I said coldly. And he took himself off. 

I have never solved the mystery of that encounter. 
Was he merely curious? Or scraping acquaintance 
with the only woman he had seen in months ? Or was 
he as imposing a person as he looked, and did he go 
away for a warrant or whatever was necessary, and 
return to find me safe in the lap of the British Army? 



LUNCHEON AT BRITISH HEADQUARTERS 263 

The canary birds sang, and a porter with a leather 
apron, having overcome a national inability to light a 
fire in the middle of the day, came to take me to my 
room. There was an odour of stewing onions in the 
air, and soapsuds, and a dog sniffed at me and barked 
because I addressed him in English. 

And then General Huguet came, friendly and smil- 
ing, and speaking English. And all was well. 

Afterward I learned how that same diplomacy which 
made me comfortable and at home with him at once 
has made smooth the relations between the English 
and French Armies. It was Chesterfield, wasn't it, 
who spoke of "Suaviter in mo do, for titer in re"? 
That is General Huguet. A tall man, dark, keen and 
of most soldierly bearing; beside the genial downright- 
ness of the British officers he was urbane, suave, but 
full of decision. His post requires diplomacy but not 
concession. 

Sir John French, he regretted to say, was at the 
front and would not return until late in the evening. 
But Colonel Fitzgerald hoped that I would come to 
luncheon at headquarters, so that we might talk over 
what was best to be done. He would, if the arrange- 
ment suited me, return at one o'clock for me. 

It was half past twelve. I made such concessions to 
the occasion as my travelling bag permitted, and, 
prompt to the minute, General Huguet' s car drew up 
at the inn door. It was a wonderful car. I used it all 
that afternoon and the next day, and I can testify 
both to its comfort and to its speed. I had travelled 
fast in cars belonging to the Belgian and French staffs, 
but never have I gone as I did in that marvel of a car. 
Somewhere among my papers I have a sketch that I 
made of the interior of the limousine body, with the 



264 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

two soldier-chauffeurs outside in front, the two car- 
bines strapped to the speedometer between the vis-a-vis 
seats inside the car, and the speedometer registering 
ninety kilometres and going up. 

We went at once to British Headquarters, with its 
sentries and its flag ; a large house, which had belonged 
to a notary, its grim and forbidding exterior gave little 
promise of the comfort within. A passage led to a 
square centre hall from which opened various rooms — * 
a library, with a wood fire, the latest possible London 
and Paris papers, a flat-topped desk and a large map ; a 
very large drawing-room, which is Sir John French's 
private orifice, with white walls panelled with rose bro- 
cade, a marble mantel, and a great centre table, cov- 
ered, like the library desk, with papers ; a dining room, 
wainscoted and comfortable. There were other rooms, 
which I did not see. In the square hall an orderly sat 
all day, waiting for orders of various sorts. 

Colonel Fitzgerald greeted me amiably. He re- 
gretted that Sir John French was absent, and was 
curious as to how I had penetrated to the fastnesses 
of British Headquarters without trouble. Now and 
then, glancing at him unexpectedly during the excel- 
lent luncheon that followed, I found his eyes fixed 
on me thoughtfully, intently. It was not at all an 
unfriendly gaze. Rather it was the look of a man 
who is painstakingly readjusting his mental processes 
to meet a new situation. 

He made a delightful host. I sat at his right. At 
the other end of the table was General Huguet, and 
across from me a young English nobleman, attached to 
the field marshal's staff, came in, a few minutes late, 
and took his place. The Prince of Wales, who lives 
there, had gone to the trenches the day before. 



LUNCHEON AT BRITISH HEADQUARTERS 265 

Two soldier-servants served the meal. There was 
red wine, but none of the officers touched it. The 
conversation was general and animated. We spoke 
of public opinion in America, of the resources of 
Germany and her starvation cry, of the probable length 
of the war. On this opinions varied. One of the 
officers prophesied a quick ending when the Allies were 
finally ready to take the offensive. The others were 
not so optimistic. But neither here, nor in any of the 
conversations I have heard at the headquarters of the 
Allies, was there a doubt expressed as to ultimate vic- 
tory. They had a quiet confidence that was contagious. 
There was no bluster, no assertion ; victory was simply 
accepted as a fact ; the only two opinions might be as 
to when it would occur, and whether the end would be 
sudden or a slow withdrawal of the German forces. 

The French Algerian troops and the Indian forces 
of Great Britain came up for discussion, their bravery, 
their dislike for trench fighting and intense longing to 
charge, the inroads the bad weather had made on them 
during the winter. 

One of the officers considered the American press 
rather pro-German. The recent American note to Sir 
Edward Grey and his reply, with the press comments 
on both, led to this statement. The possibility of Ger- 
many's intentionally antagonising America was dis- 
cussed, but not at length. 

From the press to the censorship was but a step. 
I objected to the English method as having lost us our 
perspective on the war. 

"You allow anything to go through the censor's 
office that is not considered dangerous or too explicit," 
I said. "False reports go through on an equality with 
true ones. How can America know what to believe?" 



266 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

It was suggested by some one that the only way to 
make the censorship more elastic, while retaining its 
usefulness in protecting military secrets and move- 
ments, was to establish such a censorship at the front, 
where it is easier to know what news would be harm- 
ful to give out and what may be printed with safety. 

I mentioned what a high official of the admiralty 
had said to me about the censorship — that it was "an 
infernal nuisance, but necessary." 

"But it is not true that messages are misleadingly 
changed in transmission," said one of the officers at 
the table. 

I had seen the head of the press-censorship bureau, 
and was able to repeat what he had said — that where 
the cutting out of certain phrases endangered the sense 
of a message, the words "and" or "the" were occa- 
sionally added, that the sense might be kept clear, but 
that no other additions or changes of meaning were 
ever made. 

Luncheon was over. We went into the library, and 
there, consulting the map, Colonel Fitzgerald and 
General Huguet discussed where I might go that after- 
noon. The mist of the morning had turned to rain, 
and the roads at the front would be very bad. Besides, 
it was felt that the "Chief" should give me permission 
to go to the front, and he had not yet returned. 

"How about seeing the Indians?" asked Colonel 
Fitzgerald, turning from the map. 

"I should like it very much." 

The young officer was turned to, and agreed, like a 
British patriot and gentleman, to show me the Indian 
villages. General Huguet offered his car. The officer 
got his sheepskin-lined coat, for the weather was 
cold. 



LUNCHEON AT BRITISH HEADQUARTERS 267 

'Thirty shillings," he said, "and nothing goes 
through it!" 

I examined that coat. It was smart, substantial, 
lined throughout with pure white fur, and it had cost 
seven dollars and a half. 

There is a very popular English word just making 
its place in America. The word is "swank." It is 
both noun and verb. One swanks when one swag- 
gers. One puts on swank when one puts on side. And 
because I hold a brief for the English, and because I 
was fortunate enough to meet all sorts of English 
people, I want to say that there is very little swank 
among them. The example of simplicity and genuine- 
ness has been set by the King and Queen. I met many 
different circles of people. From the highest to the 
lowest, there was a total absence of that arrogance 
which the American mind has so long associated with 
the English. For fear of being thought to swagger, 
an Englishman will understate his case. And so with 
the various English officers I met at the front. There 
was no swank. They were downright, unassuming, 
extremely efficient-looking men, quick to speak of 
German courage, ready to give the benefit of the doubt 
where unproved outrages were in question, but rous- 
ing, as I have said, to pale fury where their troops 
were being unfairly attacked. 

While the car was being brought to the door General 
Huguet pointed out to me on the map where I was 
going. As we stood there his pencil drew a light 
semicircle round the town of Ypres. 

"A great battle," he said, and described it. Colonel 
Fitzgerald took up the narrative. So it happened that, 
in the three different staff headquarters, Belgian, 
French and English, executive officers of the three 



268 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

armies in the western field described to me that great 
battle — the frightful slaughter of the English, their 
re-enforcement at a critical time by General Foch's 
French Army of the North, and the final holding of 
the line. 

The official figures of casualties were given me 
again : English forty- five thousand out of a hundred 
and twenty thousand engaged; the French seventy 
thousand, and the German over two hundred thou- 
sand. 

Turning to the table, Colonel Fitzgerald picked up a 
sheet of paper covered with figures. 

"It is interesting," he said, "to compare the disease 
and battle mortality percentages of this war with the 
percentages in other wars; to see, considering the 
frightful weather and the trenches, how little disease 
there has been among our troops. Compare the figures 
with the Boer War, for instance. And even then our 
percentage has been somewhat brought up by the In- 
dian troops." 

"Have many of them been ill?" 

"They have felt the weather," he replied; "not the 
cold so much as the steady rain. And those regiments 
of English that have been serving in India have felt 
the change. They particularly have suffered from 
frostbitten feet." 

I knew that. More than once I had seen men being 
taken back from the British lines, their faces twisted 
with pain, their feet great masses of cotton and ban- 
dages which they guarded tenderly, lest a chance blow 
add to their agony. Even the English system of al- 
lowing the men to rub themselves with lard and oil 
from the waist down before going into flooded 
trenches has not prevented the tortures of frostbite. 



LUNCHEON AT BRITISH HEADQUARTERS 269 

It was time to go and the motor was waiting. We 
set off in a driving sleel thai covered the windows of 
the car and made motoring even more 1 1 1 . 1 1 ■ ordinarily 
precarious. Bu1 the roads here were better than those 
nearer the coasl j wider, too, and not so crowded. To 
l lam, where the Indian regiment I was t<» visii had 
been retired for rest, was almosl twenty miles. 

"Mam!" I said. "What a place lo send Mohaininc 
dans to I" 

In his long dispatch of February seventeenth Sir 

John French said of the Indian troops: 

"The Indian hoops have fought with the utmost 
Bteadfastness and gallantry whenever they have been 

called Upon." 

This is the answer io many varying statements as 
to the efficacy of the assistance furnished by her In- 
dian subjects to the British Empire at this time. For 
Sir John French is a soldier, not a diplomat. No 
question <>f the union of the Empire influences his 

reports. The Indians have heen valnahle, or he would 
not say SO. He IS ehary of praise, is (he Field Mar- 
shal of the British Army. 

But there is another answer that every where along 
the British front <>n<- sees the Ghurkas, slant eyed and 
Mongolian, with their broad brimmedi khaki coloured 
hats, filling posts of responsibility. They are little 
men, smaller than the Sikhs, rather reminiscent of the 

Japanese in hnild and alertness. 

When I wasai the English front some of the Sikhs 

had heen retired to rest. But even in the small villages 

on billet, relaxed and resting, they were a fine and 

soldierly looking hody of men, showni.-; 1 a- e and Ih< 11 
ancient civilisat ion. 



270 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

It has been claimed that England called on her In- 
dian troops, not because she expected much assistance 
from them but to show the essential unity of the 
British Empire. The plain truth is, however, that she 
needed the troops, needed men at once, needed ex- 
perienced soldiers to eke out her small and purely de- 
fensive army of regulars. Volunteers had to be 
equipped and drilled — a matter of months. 

To say that she called to her aid barbarians is ab- 
surd. The Ghurkas are fierce fighters, but carefully 
disciplined. Compare the lances of the Indian cavalry 
regiments and the kukri, the Ghurka knife, with the 
petrol squirts, hand grenades, aeroplane darts and as- 
phyxiating bombs of Germany, and call one barbarian 
to the advantage of the other ! The truth is, of course, 
that war itself is barbarous. 



CHAPTER XXVII 
A STRANGE PARTY 



' I A HE road to Ham turned off the main highway 
A south of Aire. It was a narrow clay road in 
unspeakable condition. The car wallowed along. 
Once we took a wrong turning and were obliged to 
go back and start again. 

It was still raining. Indian horsemen beat their 
way stolidly along the road. We passed through ham- 
lets where cavalry horses in ruined stables were scan- 
tily protected, where the familiar omnibuses of Lon- 
don were parked in what appeared to be hundreds. 
The cocoa and other advertisements had been taken 
off and they had been hastily painted a yellowish grey. 
Here and there we met one on the road, filled and 
overflowing with troops, and looking curiously like 
the "rubber-neck wagons" of New York. 

Aside from the transports and a few small Indian 
ammunition carts, with open bodies made of slats, and 
drawn by two mules, with an impassive turbaned 
driver calling strange words to his team, there was no 
sign of war. No bombarding disturbed the heavy 
atmosphere ; no aeroplanes were overhead. There was 
no barbed wire, no trenches. Only muddy sugarbeet 
fields on each side of the narrow road, a few winter 
trees, and the beat of the rain on the windows. 

At last, with an extra lurch, the car drew up in 
271 



272 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

the village of Ham. At a gate in a brick wall a Scotch 
soldier in kilts, carrying a rifle, came forward. Our 
errand was explained and he went off to find Makand 
Singh, a major in the Lahore Lancers and in charge 
of the post. 

It was a curious picture that I surveyed through 
the opened door of the car. We were in the centre 
of the village, and at the intersection of a crossroads 
was a tall cross with a life-size Christ. Underneath 
the cross, in varying attitudes of dampness and curi- 
osity, were a dozen Indians, Mohammedans by faith. 
Some of them held horses which, in spite of the rain, 
they had been exercising. One or two wore long capes 
to the knees, with pointed hoods which fitted up over 
their great turbans. Bearded men with straight, sensi- 
tive noses and oval faces, even the absurdity of the 
cape and pointed hood failed to lessen their dignity. 
They were tall, erect, soldierly looking, and they gazed 
at me with the bland gravity of the East. 

Makand Singh came hastily forward, a splendid 
figure of a man, six foot two or thereabout, and ap- 
pearing even taller by reason of his turban. He spoke 
excellent English. 

"It is very muddy for a lady to alight," he said, 
and instructed one of the men to bring bags of sack- 
ing, which were laid in the road. 

"You are seeing us under very unfavourable condi- 
tions," he said as he helped me to alight. "But there 
is a fire if you are cold." 

I was cold. So Makand Singh led the way to his 
living quarters. To go to them it was necessary to 
pass through a long shed, which was now a stable for 
perhaps a dozen horses. At a word of command the 
Indian grooms threw themselves against the horses' 



A STRANGE PARTY 273 

heads and pushed them back. By stepping over the 
ground pegs to which they were tethered I got through 
the shed somehow and into a small yard. 

Makand Singh turned to the right, and, throwing 
open the low door of a peasant's house, stood aside to 
allow me to enter. "It is not very comfortable," he 
explained, "but it is the best we have.'' 

He was so tall that he was obliged to stoop as he 
entered the doorway. Within was an ordinary peas- 
ant's kitchen, but cleaner than the average. In spite 
of the weather the floor boards were freshly scrubbed. 
The hearth was swept, and by the stove lay a sleek 
tortoise-shell cat. There was a wooden dresser, a 
chimney shelf with rows of plates standing on it, and 
in a doorway just beyond an elderly peasant woman 
watching us curiously. 

"Perhaps/ ' said Makand Singh, "you will have 
coffee?" 

I was glad to accept, and the young officer, who had 
followed, accepted also. We sat down while the kettle 
was placed on the stove and the fire replenished. I 
glanced at the Indian major's tall figure. Even sitting, 
he was majestic. When he took the cape off he was 
discovered clothed in the khaki uniform of his rank in 
the British Army. Except for the olive colour of his 
skin, his turban, and the fact that his beard — the soft 
beard of one who has never shaved — was drawn up 
into a black net so that it formed a perfect crescent 
around the angle of his jaw, he might have been a; 
gallant and interested English officer. 

For the situation assuredly interested him. His 
eyes were alert and keen. When he smiled he showed 
rows of beautiful teeth, small and white. And al- 
though his face in repose was grave, he smiled often. 



274 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

He superintended the making of the coffee by the 
peasant woman and instructed her to prepare the 
table. 

She obeyed pleasantly. Indeed, it was odd to see 
that between this elderly Frenchwoman and her 
strange guests — people of whose existence on the earth 
I dare say she had never heard until this war — there 
was the utmost good will. Perhaps the Indians are 
neater than other troops. Certainly personal cleanli- 
ness is a part of their religion. Anyhow, whatever 
the reason, I saw no evidence of sulkiness toward the 
Indians, although I have seen surly glances directed 
toward many of the billeted troops of other nationali- 
ties. 

Conversation was rather difficult. We had no com- 
mon ground to meet on, and the ordinary currency of 
polite society seemed inadequate, out of place. 

"The weather must be terrible after India/' I ven- 
tured. 

"We do not mind the cold. We come from the 
north of India, where it is often cold. But the mud 
is bad. We cannot use our horses." 

"You are a cavalry regiment?" I asked, out of my 
abysmal ignorance. 

"We are Lancers. Yes. And horses are not useful 
in this sort of fighting." 

From a room beyond there was a movement, fol- 
lowed by the entrance of a young Frenchman in a 
British uniform. Makand Singh presented him and 
he joined the circle that waited for coffee. 

The newcomer presented an enigma — a Frenchman 
in a British uniform quartered with the Indian troops! 
It developed that he was a pupil from the Sorbonne, 
in Paris, and was an interpreter. Everywhere after- 



A STRANGE PARTY 275 

ward I found these interpreters with the British Army 
I — Frenchmen who for various reasons are disqualified 
from entering the French Army in active service and 
who are anxious to do what they can. They wear 
the British uniform, with the exception that instead 
of the stiff crown of the British cap theirs is soft. 
They are attached to every battalion, for Tommy At- 
kins is in a strange land these days, a land that knows 
no more English than he knows French. 

True, he carries little books of French and English 
which tell him how to say "Porter, get my luggage 
and take it to a cab," or "Please bring me a laundry 
list," or "Give my kind regards to your parents." Ima- 
gine him trying to find the French for "Look out, 
they're coming!" to call to a French neighbour, in the 
inevitable mix-up of the line during a melee, and find- 
ing only "These trousers do not fit well," or "I would 
like an ice and then a small piece of cheese." 

It was a curious group that sat in a semicircle around 
that peasant woman's stove, waiting for the kettle to 
boil — the tall Indian major with his aristocratic face 
and long, quiet hands, the young English officer in his 
Headquarters Staff uniform, the French interpreter, 
and I. Just inside the door the major's Indian serv- 
ant, tall, impassive and turbaned, stood with folded 
arms, looking over our heads. And at the table the 
placid-faced peasant woman cut slices of yellow bread, 
made with eggs and milk, and poured our coffee. 

It was very good coffee, served black. The woman 
brought a small decanter and placed it near me. 

"It is rum," said the major, "and very good in 
coffee." 

I declined the rum. The interpreter took a little. 
The major shook his head. 



276 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

"Although they say that a Sikh never refuses rum !" 
he said, smiling. 

Coffee over, we walked about the village. Hardly a 
village — a cluster of houses along unpaved lanes 
which were almost impassable. There were tumbling 
stables full of horses, groups of Indians standing un- 
der dripping eaves for shelter, sentries, here and there 
a peasant. The houses were replicas of the one where 
Makand Singh had his quarters. 

Although it was still raining, a dozen Indian Lan- 
cers were exercising their horses. They dismounted 
and stood back to let us pass. Behind them, as they 
stood, was the great Cross. 

That was the final picture I had of the village of 
Ham and the Second Lahore Lancers — the turbaned 
Indians with their dripping horses, the grave bow of 
Makand Singh as he closed the door of the car, and 
behind him a Scotch corporal in kilt and cap, with a 
cigarette tucked behind his ear. 

We went on. I looked back. Makand Singh was 
making his careful way through the mud; the horses 
were being led to a stable. The Cross stood alone. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 
SIR JOHN FRENCH 



THE next day I was taken along the English 
front, between the first and the second line of 
trenches, from Bethune, the southern extremity of the 
line, the English right flank, to the northern end of the 
line just below Ypres. In a direct line the British 
front at that time extended along some twenty-seven 
miles. But the line was irregular, and I believe was 
really well over thirty. 

I have never been in an English trench. I have 
been close enough to the advance trenches to be shown 
where they lay, and to see the slight break they make 
in the flat country. I was never in a dangerous posi- 
tion at the English front, if one excepts the fact that 
all of that portion of the country between the two 
lines of trenches is exposed to shell fire. 

No shells burst near me. Bethune was being inter- 
mittently shelled, but as far as I know not a shell fell 
in the town while I was there. I lunched on a hill 
surrounded by batteries, with the now celebrated towns 
of Messines and Wytschaete just across a valley, so 
that one could watch shells bursting over them. And 
still nothing threatened my peace of mind or my phys- 
ical well-being. And yet it was one of the most in- 
teresting days of a not uneventful period. 

277 



278 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

In the morning I was taken, still in General Hu- 
guet's car, to British Headquarters again, to meet Sir 
John French. 

I confess to a thrill of excitement when the door 
into his private office was opened and I was ushered 
in. The Field Marshal of the British Army was stand- 
ing by his table. He came forward at once and shook 
hands. In his khaki uniform, with the scarlet straps 
of his rank on collar and sleeves, he presented a most 
soldierly and impressive appearance. 

A man of middle height, squarely and compactly 
built, he moves easily. He is very erect, and his 
tanned face and gtey hair are in strong contrast. A 
square and determined jaw, very keen blue eyes and 
a humorous mouth — that is my impression of Sir 
John French. 

"We are sending you along the lines," he said when 
I was seated. "But not into danger. I hope you do 
not want to go into danger." 

I wish I might tell of the conversation that followed. 
It is impossible. Not that it dealt with vital matters ; 
but it was understood that Sir John was not being 
interviewed. He was taking a little time from a day 
that must have been crowded, to receive with beauti- 
ful courtesy a visitor from overseas. That was all. 

There can be no objection, I think, to my mention- 
ing one or two things he spoke of — of his admiration 
for General Foch, whom I had just seen, of the tribute 
he paid to the courage of the Indian troops, and of 
the marvellous spirit all the British troops had shown 
under the adverse weather conditions prevailing. All 
or most of these things he has said in his official dis- 
patches. 

Other things were touched on — the possible dura- 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 279 

tion of the war, the new problems of what is virtually 
a new warfare, the possibility of a pestilence when 
warm weather came, owing to inadequately buried 
bodies. The Canadian troops had not arrived at the 
front at that time, although later in the day I saw 
their transports on the way, or I am sure he would 
have spoken of them. I should like to hear what he 
has to say about them after their recent gallant fight- 
ing. I should like to see his fine blue eyes sparkle. 

The car was at the door, and the same young officer 
who had taken me about on the previous day entered 
the room. 

"I am putting you in his care/' said Sir John, in- 
dicating the new arrival, "because he has a charmed 
life. Nothing will happen if you are with him." He 
eyed the tall young officer affectionately. "He has 
been fighting since the beginning," he said, "handling 
a machine gun in all sorts of terrible places. And noth- 
ing ever touches him." 

A discussion followed as to where I was to be taken. 
There was a culm heap near the Givenchy brickyards 
which was rather favoured as a lookout spot. In spite 
of my protests, that was ruled out as being under fire 
at the time. Bethune was being shelled, but not se- 
verely. I would be taken to Bethune and along the 
road behind the trenches. But nothing was to happen 
to me. Sir John French knitted his grey brows, and 
suggested a visit to a wood where the soldiers had 
built wooden walks and put up signs, naming them 
Piccadilly, Regent Street, and so on. 

"I should like to see something," I put in feebly. 

I appreciated their kindly solicitude, but after all I 
was there to see things ; to take risks, if necessary, but 
to see. 



280 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

"Then," said Sir John with decision, "we will send 
you to a hill from which you can see." 

The trip was arranged while I waited. Then he 
went with me to the door and there we shook hands. 
He hoped I would have a comfortable trip, and bowed 
me out most courteously. But in the doorway he 
thought of something. 

"Have you a camera with you?" 

I had, and said so; a very good camera. 

"I hope you do not mind if I ask you not to use it." 

I did not mind. I promised at once to take no 
pictures, and indeed at the end of the afternoon I 
found my unfortunate camera on the floor, much 
buffeted and kicked about and entirely ignored. 

The interview with Sir John French had given me 
an entirely unexpected impression of the Field Mar- 
shal of the British Army. I had read his reports 
fully, and from those unemotional reports of battles, 
of movements and countermovements, I had formed a 
picture of a great soldier without imagination, to whom 
a battle was an issue, not a great human struggle — 
an austere man. 

I had found a man with a fighting jaw and a sen- 
sitive mouth; and a man greatly beloved by the 
men closest to him. A human man; a soldier, not a 
writer. 

And after seeing and talking with Sir John French 
I am convinced that it is not his policy that dictates 
the silence of the army at the front. He is proud 
of his men, proud of each heroic regiment, of every 
brave deed. He would like, I am sure, to shout to 
the world the names of the heroes of the British Army, 
to publish great rolls of honour. But silence, or com- 
parative silence, has been the decree. 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 281 



There must be long hours of suspense when the 
Field Marshal of the British Army paces the floor of 
that grey and rose brocade drawing-room ; hours when 
the orders he has given are being translated into 
terms of action, of death, of wounds, but sometimes 
— thank God! — into terms of victory. Long hours, 
when the wires and the dispatch riders bring in news, 
valiant names, gains, losses; names that are not to be 
told; brave deeds that, lacking chroniclers, must go 
unrecorded. 

Read this, from the report Sir John French sent 
out only a day or so before I saw him : 

"The troops composing the Army of France have 
been subjected to as severe a trial as it is possible to 
impose upon any body of men. The desperate fight- 
ing described in my last dispatch had hardly been 
brought to a conclusion when they were called upon 
to face the rigours and hardships of a winter campaign. 
Frost and snow have alternated with periods of con- 
tinuous rain. 

"The men have been called upon to stand for many 
hours together almost up to their waists in bitterly 
cold water, separated by only one or two hundred 
yards from a most vigilant enemy. 

"Although every measure which science and medical 
knowledge could suggest to mitigate these hardships 
was employed, the sufferings of the men have been 
very great. 

"In spite of all this they present a most soldierlike, 
splendid, though somewhat war-worn appearance. 
Their spirit remains high and confident ; their general 
health is excellent, and their condition most satisfac- 
tory. 



282 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

"I regard it as most unfortunate that circumstances 
have prevented any account of many splendid in- 
stances of courage and endurance, in the face of al- 
most unparalleled hardship and fatigue in war, coming 
regularly to the knowledge of the public." 

So it is clearly not the fault of Sir John French that 
England does not know the names of her heroes, or 
that their families are denied the comfort of knowing, 
that their sons fought bravely and died nobly. It is 
not the fault of the British people, waiting eagerly, 
for news that does not come. Surely, in these in- 
human times, some concession should be made to the 
humanities. War is not moving pawns in a game; 
it is a struggle of quivering flesh and agonised nerves, 
of men fighting and dying for ideals. Heroism is ; 
much more than duty. It is idealism. No leader is 
truly great who discounts this quality. 

America has known more of the great human in- 
terest of this war than England. English people gett 
the news from great American dailies. It is an un- 
precedented situation, and so far the English people: 
have borne it almost in silence. But as the months 
go on and only bare official dispatches reach them, 
there is a growing tendency to protest. They want!i 
the truth, a picture of conditions. They want to know 
what their army is doing; what their sons are doing. 
And they have a right to know. They are making 
tremendous sacrifices, and they have a right to know 
to what end. 

The greatest agent in the world for moulding public 
opinion is the press. The Germans know this, and i 
have used their journals skilfully. To underestimate 
the power of the press, to fail to trust to its good will ! 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 283 

and discretion, is to refuse to wield the mightiest in- 
strument in the world for influencing national thought 
and national action. At times of great crisis the press 
has always shown itself sane, conservative, safe, emi- 
nently to be trusted. 

The English know the power of the great modern 
newspaper, not only to reflect but to form public opin- 
ion. They have watched the American press because 
they know to what extent it influences American 
policy. 

There is talk of conscription in England to-day. 
Why? Ask the British people. Ask the London 
Times. Ask rural England where, away from the 
tramp of soldiers in the streets, the roll of drums, 
the visual evidence of a great struggle, patriotism is 
I asked to feed on the ashes of war. 

Self-depreciation in a nation is as great an error as 
over-complacency. Lack of full knowledge is the 
cause of much of the present British discontent. 

Let the British people be told what their army is 
doing. Let Lord Kitchener announce its deeds, its 
courage, its vast unselfishness. Let him put the torch 
of publicity to the national pride and see it turn to a 
white flame of patriotism. Then it will be possible to 
tear the recruiting posters from the walls of London, 
and the remotest roads of England will echo to the 
tramp of marching men. 



CHAPTER XXIX 
ALONG THE GREAT BETHUNE ROAD 



A GAIN' and again through these chapters I have 
-* ** felt apologetic for the luxurious manner in 
which I frequently saw the war. And so now I hesi- 
tate to mention the comfort of that trip along the 
British lines; the substantial and essentially British 
foresight and kindness that had stocked the car with 
sandwiches wrapped in white paper; the good roads; 
the sense of general well-being that spread like a con- 
tagion from a well-fed and well-cared-for army. There 
is something about the British Army that inspires one 
with confidence. It is a pity that those people who sit 
at home in Great Britain and shrug their shoulders 
over the daily papers cannot see their army at the 
front. 

It is not a roast-beef stolidity. It is rather the 
steadiness of calm eyes and good nerves, of physically 
fit bodies and clean minds. I felt it when I saw 
Kitchener's army of clear-eyed boys drilling in Hyde 
Park. I got it from the quiet young officer, still in his 
twenties, who sat beside me in the car, and who, hav- 
ing been in the war from the beginning, handling a 
machine gun all through the battle of Ypres, when his 
regiment, the Grenadier Guards, suffered so horribly, 
was willing to talk about everything but what he had 
done. 

284 



ALONG THE GREAT BETHUNE ROAD 285 

We went first to Bethune. The roads as we ap- 
proached the front were crowded, but there was no 
disorder. There were motor bicycles and side-cars 
carrying dispatch riders and scouts, travelling kitchens, 
great lorries, small light cars for supplies needed in a 
hurry — cars which make greater speed than the motor 
vans — omnibuses full of troops, and steam tractors or 
caterpillar engines for hauling heavy guns. 

The day was sunny and cold. The rain of the day 
before had turned to snow in the night, and the fields 
were dazzling. 

"In the east," said the officer with me, "where there 
is always snow in the winter, the Germans have sent 
out to their troops white helmet covers and white 
smocks to cover the uniforms. But snow is compara- 
tively rare here, and it has not been considered neces- 
sary." 

At a small bridge ten miles from Bethune he pointed 
out a house as marking the farthest advance of the 
German Army, reached about the eleventh of Octo- 
ber. There was no evidence of the hard fighting that 
had gone on along this road. It was a peaceful scene, 
the black branches of the overarching trees lightly 
powdered with snow. But the snowy fields were full 
of unmarked mounds. Another year, and the mounds 
will have sunk to the level of the ground. Another 
year, and only history will tell the story of that Octo- 
ber of 1914 along the great Bethune road. 

An English aeroplane was overhead. There were 
armoured cars on the road, going toward the front; 
top-heavy machines that made surprisingly little noise, 
considering their weight. Some had a sort of con- 
ning tower at the top. They looked sombre, menac- 
ing. The driving of these cars over slippery roads 



286 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

must be difficult. Like the vans, they keep as near 
the centre of the road as possible, allowing lighter 
traffic to turn out to pass them. A van had broken 
down and was being repaired at one of the wayside 
repair shops maintained everywhere along the roads 
for this war of machinery. Men in khaki with leather 
aprons were working about it, while the driver stood 
by, smoking a pipe. 

As we went on we encountered the Indian troops 
again. The weather was better, and they thronged the 
roads, driving their tiny carts, cleaning arms and 
accoutrements in sunny doorways, proud and haughty 
in appearence even when attending to the most menial 
duties. From the little ammunition carts, like toy 
wagons, they gazed gravely at the car, and at the un- 
heard-of spectacle of a woman inside. Side by side 
with the Indians were Scots in kilts, making up 
with cheerful impudence for the Indians* lack of 
curiosity. 

There were more Ghurkas, carrying rifles and walk- 
ing lightly beside forage carts driven by British Tom- 
mies. There were hundreds of these carts taking 
hay to the cavalry divisions. The Ghurkas looked 
more Japanese than ever in the clear light. Their 
broad-brimmed khaki hats have a strap that goes under 
the chin. The strap or their black slanting eyes or 
perhaps their rather flattened noses and pointed chins 
give them a look of cruelty that the other Indian 
troops do not have. They are hard and relentless 
fighters, I believe; and they look it. 

The conversation in the car turned to the feeding 
of the army. 

"The British Army is exceedingly well fed," said 
the young officer. 



ALONG THE GREAT BETHUNE ROAD 287 

"In the trenches also?" 

"Always. The men are four days in the trenches 
ind four out. When the weather is too bad for any- 
thing but sniping, the inactivity of the trench life 
and the abundant ration gets them out of condition. 
On their four days in reserve it is necessary to drill 
them hard to keep them in condition." 

This proved to be the explanation of the battalions 
we met everywhere, marching briskly along the roads. 
I do not recall the British ration now, but it includes, 
in addition to meat and vegetables, tea, cheese, jam 
and bacon — probably not all at once, but giving that 
variety of diet so lacking to the unfortunate Belgian 
Army. Food is one of the principal munitions of 
war. No man fights well with an empty stomach. 
Food sinks into the background only when it is assured 
and plentiful. Deprived of it, its need becomes in- 
sistent, an obsession that drives away every other 
thought. 

So the wise British Army feeds its men well, and 
lets them think of other things, such as war and fight- 
ing and love of country and brave deeds. 

But food has not always been plentiful in the 
British Army. There were times last fall when, what 
with German artillery bombardment and shifting lines, 
it was difficult to supply the men. 

"My servant," said the officer, "found a hare some- 
where, and in a deserted garden a handful of carrots. 
Word came to the trench where I was stationed that 
at dark that night he would bring out a stew. We were 
very hungry and we waited eagerly. But just as it 
was cooked and ready a German shell came down 
the chimney of the house where he was working and 
blew up stove and stew and everything. It was 



288 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

one of the greatest disappointments I ever remem- 
ber." 

We were in Bethune at last — a crowded town, larger 
than any I had seen since I left Dunkirk. So con- 
gested were its narrow streets with soldiers, mounted 
and on foot, and with all the ghastly machinery of 
war, that a traffic squad had taken charge and was 
directing things. On some streets it was possible to 
go only in one direction. I looked about for the signs 
of destruction that had grown so familiar to me, but 
I saw none. Evidently the bombardment of Bethune 
had not yet done much damage. 

A squad of artillerymen marched by in perfect 
step ; their faces were keen, bronzed. They were fine- 
looking, well-set-up men, as smart as English artillery- 
men always are. I watched them as long as I could 
see them. 

We had lost our way, owing to the regulations of 
the traffic squad. It was necessary to stop and inquire. 
Then at last we crossed a small bridge over the canal, 
and were on our way along the front, behind the 
advanced trenches and just in front of the second 
line. 

For a few miles the country was very level. The 
firing was on our right, the second line of trenches on 
our left. The congestion of Bethune had given way 
to the extreme peace in daylight of the region just 
behind the trenches. There were few wagons, few 
soldiers. Nothing could be seen except an occasional 
cloud where shrapnel had burst. The British Army 
was keeping me safe, as it had promised ! 

There were, however, barbed-wire entanglements 
everywhere, built, I thought, rather higher than the 
French. Roads to the right led to the advanced 



ALONG THE GREAT BETHUNE ROAD 289 

trenches, empty roads which at night are thronged 
with men going to the front or coming back. 

Here and there one saw a sentry, and behind him 
a tent of curious mottled shades of red, brown and 
green. 

"They look as though they were painted," I said, 
rather bewildered. 

"They are," the officer replied promptly. "From 
an aeroplane these tents are absolutely impossible to 
locate. They merge into the colors of the fields." 

Now and then at a crossroads it was necessary to 
inquire our way. I had no wish to run into danger, 
but I was conscious of a wild longing to have the car 
take the wrong turning and land abruptly at the ad- 
vance trenches. Nothing of the sort happened, how- 
ever. 

We passed small buildings converted into field hos- 
pitals and flying the white flag with a red cross. 

"There are no nurses in these hospitals," explained 
the officer. "Only one surgeon and a few helpers. 
The men are brought here from the trenches, and 
then taken back at night in ambulances to the railroad 
or to base hospitals." 

"Are there no nurses at all along the British front ? ,r 

"None whatever. There are no women here in 
any capacity. That is why the men are so surprised 
to see you." 

Here and there, behind the protection of groves and 
small thickets, were temporary camps, sometimes tents, 
sometimes tent-shaped shelters of wood. There were 
batteries on the right everywhere, great guns con- 
cealed in farmyards or, like the guns I had seen on 
the French front, in artificial hedges. Some of them 
were firing; but the firing of a battery amounts to 



290 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

nothing but a great noise in these days of long ranges. 
Somewhere across the valley the shells would burst, we 
knew that; that was all. 

The conversation turned to the Prince of Wales, 
and to the responsibility it was to the various officers 
to have him in the trenches. Strenuous efforts had 
been made to persuade him to be satisfied with the 
work at headquarters, w T here he is attached to Sir 
John French's staff. But evidently the young heir 
to the throne of England is a man in spite of his youth. 
He wanted to go out and fight, and he had at last 
secured permission. 

"He has had rather remarkable training," said the 
young officer, who was also his friend. "First he was 
in Calais with the transport service. Then he came 
to headquarters, and has seen how things are done 
there. And now he is at the front." 

Quite unexpectedly round a turn in the road we 
came on a great line of Canadian transports — Ameri- 
can-built lorries with khaki canvas tops. Canadians 
were driving them, Canadians were guarding them. 
It gave me a homesick thrill at once to see these other 
Americans, of types so familiar to me, there in North- 
ern France. 

Their faces were eager as they pushed ahead. Some 
of the tent-shaped wooden buildings were to be tem- 
porary barracks for them. In one place the transports 
had stopped and the men were cooking a meal beside 
the road. Some one had brought a newspaper and a 
crowd of men had gathered round it. I wondered if 
it was an American paper. I would like to have stood 
on the running board of the machine, as we went past, 
and called out that I, too, was an American, and God 
bless them! 



ALONG THE GREAT BETHUNE ROAD 291 

But I fancy the young officer with me would have 
been greatly disconcerted at such an action. The 
English are not given to such demonstrations. But 
the Canadians would have understood, I know. 

Since that time the reports have brought great news 
of these Canadian troops, of their courage, of the loss 
of almost all their officers in the fighting at Neuve 
Chapelle. But that sunny morning, when I saw them 
in the north of France, they were untouched by bat- 
tle or sudden death. Their faces were eager, intent, 
earnest. They had come a long distance and now they 
had arrived. And what next ? 

Into this scene of war unexpectedly obtruded itself 
a bit of peace. A great cart came down a side road, 
drawn by two white oxen with heavy wooden yokes. 
Piled high in the cart were sugar beets. Some thrifty 
peasant was salvaging what was left of his crop. The 
sight of the oxen reminded me that I had seen very 
few horses. 

"They are farther back," said the officer. "Of 
course, as you know, for the last two or three months 
it has been impossible to use the cavalry at all." 

Then he told me a curious thing. He said that 
during the long winter wait the cavalry horses got 
much out of condition. The side roads were thick 
with mud and the main roads were being reserved for 
transports. Adequate exercises for the cavalry seemed 
impossible. One detachment discovered what it con- 
sidered a bright solution, and sent to England for 
beagle hounds. Morning after morning the men rode 
after the hounds over the flat fields of France. It was 
a welcome distraction and it kept the horses in work- 
ing trim. 

But the French objected. They said their country 



292 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

was at war, was being devastated by an alien army. 
They considered riding to hounds, no matter for what 
purpose, an indecorous, almost an inhuman, thing to 
do under the circumstances. So the hounds were sent 
back to England, and the cavalry horses are now exer- 
cised in dejected strings along side roads. 

As we went north the firing increased in intensity. 
More English batteries were at work; the German 
response was insistent. 

We were approaching Ypres, this time from the 
English side, and the great artillery duel of late Feb- 
ruary was in progress. 

The country was slightly rolling. Its unevenness 
permitted more activity along our road. Batteries 
were drawn up at rest in the fields here and there. In 
one place a dozen food kitchens in the road were 
cooking the midday meal, the khaki-clad cooks fre- 
quently smoking as they worked. 

Ahead of this loomed two hills. They rose abruptly, 
treeless and precipitous. On the one nearest to the 
German lines was a ruined tower. 

"The tower," said the officer, "would have been 
a charming place for luncheon. But the hill has been 
shelled steadily for several days. I have no idea why 
the Germans are shelling it. There is nobody there/' 



CHAPTER XXX 
THE MILITARY SECRET 



THE second hill was our destination. At the foot 
of it the car stopped and we got out. A steep 
path with here and there a wooden step led to the 
summit. At the foot of the path was a sentry and 
behind him one of the multicoloured tents. 

"Are you a good climber?" asked the officer. 

I said I was and we set out. The path extended 
only a part of the way, to a place perhaps two hundred 
feet beyond the road, where what we would call a 
cyclone cellar in America had been dug out of the 
hillside. Like the others of the sort I had seen, it was 
muddy and uninviting, practically a cave with a roof 
of turf. 

The path ceased, and it was necessary to go diag- 
onally up the steep hillside through the snow. From 
numberless guns at the base of the hill came steady 
reports, and as we ascended it was explained to me 
that I was about to visit the headquarters of Major 
General H , commanding an army division. 

"The last person I brought here," said the young 
officer, smiling, "was the Prince of Wales." 

We reached the top at last. There was a tiny 
farmhouse, a low stable with a thatched roof, and, 
towering over all, the arms of a great windmill. Chick- 

293 



294 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

ens cackled round my feet, a pig grunted in a corner, 
and apparently from directly underneath came the 
ear-splitting reports of a battery as it fired. 

"Perhaps I would better go ahead and tell them 
you are coming," said the officer. "These people 
have probably not seen a woman in months, and 
the shock would be too severe. We must break it 
gently." 

So he went ahead, and I stood on the crest of that 
wind-swept hill and looked across the valley to Mes- 
sines, to Wytschaete and Ypres. 

The battlefield lay spread out like a map. As I 
looked, clouds of smoke over Messines told of the 
bursting of shells. 

Major General H came hurrying out. His 

quarters occupy the only high ground, with the excep- 
tion of the near-by hill with its ruined tower, in the 
neighbourhood of Ypres. Here, a week or so before, 
had come the King of Belgium, to look with tragic 
eyes at all that remained to him of his country. Here 
had come visiting Russian princes from the eastern 
field, the King of England, the Prince of Wales, No 
obscurities — except myself — had ever penetrated so 
far into the fastness of the British lines. 

Later on in the day I wrote my name in a visitors' 
book the officers have established there, wrote under 
sprawling royal signatures, under the boyish hand of 
the Prince of Wales, the irregular chirography of 
Albert of Belgium, the blunt and soldierly name of 
General JofTre. 

There are six officers stationed in the farmhouse, 

composing General H 's staff. And, as things 

turned out, we did not require the white-paper sand- 
wiches, for we were at once invited to luncheon. 



THE MILITARY SECRET 295 

"Not a very elaborate luncheon," said General 
H — 1 — , "but it will give us a great deal of pleasure to 
share it." 

While the extra places were being laid we went to 
the brow of the hill. Across the valley at the foot of 
a wooded ridge were the British trenches. The 
ground rose in front of them, thickly covered with 
trees, to the German position on the ridge. 

"It looks from here like a very uncomfortable po- 
sition," I said. "The German position is better, isn't 
it?" 

"It is," said General H grimly. "But we shall 

take that hill before long." 

I am not sure, and my many maps do not say, but 
there is little doubt in my mind that the hill in question 
is the now celebrated Hill 60, of which so much has 
been published. 

As we looked across shells were bursting round the 
church tower of Messines, and the batteries beneath 
were sending out ear-splitting crashes of noise. Ypres, 
less than three miles away, but partly hidden in mist, 
was echoing the bombardment. And to complete the 
pandemonium of sound, as we turned, a mitrailleuse 
in the windmill opened fire behind us. 

"Practice !" said General H as I started. "It is 

noisy here, I'm afraid." 

We went through the muddy farmyard back to the 
house. The staff was waiting and we sat down at 
once to luncheon at a tiny pine table drawn up before 
a window. It was not a good luncheon. The French 
wine was like vinegar, the food the ordinary food of 
the peasant whose house it was. But it was a cheer- 
ful meal in spite of the food, and in spite of a boil on 
General H 's neck. The marvel of a woman being 



296 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

there seemed to grow, not diminish, as the meal went 
on. 

"Next week," said General H , "we are to 

have two parties of correspondents here. The penny 
papers come first, and later on the ha'pennies!" 

That brought the conversation, as usual, to the feel- 
ing about the war in America. Like all the other offi- 
cers I had met, these men were anxious to have things 
correctly reported in America, being satisfied that 
the true story of the war would undoubtedly influence 
any wavering of public opinion in favour of the Allies. 

One of the officers was a Canadian, and for his 
benefit somebody told the following story, possibly by 
now familiar to America. 

Some of the Canadian troops took with them to 
England a bit of the dash and impatience of disci- 
pline of the great Northwest. The story in question 
is of a group of soldiers at night passing a sentry, 
who challenges them : 

"Halt! Who goes there?" 

"Black Watch." 

"Advance, Black Watch, and all's well." 

The next group is similarly challenged: 

"Halt! Who goes there?" 

"Cameronians." 

"Advance, Cameronians." 

The third group comes on. 

"Halt! Who goes there?" 

"What the devil is that to you?" 

"Advance, Canadians !" 

In the burst of mirth that followed the Canadian 
officer joined. Then he told an anecdote also : 

"British recruits, practising passing a whispered 
order from one end of a trench to the other, received 



THE MILITARY SECRET 297 

this message to pass along: 'Enemy advancing on 
right flank. Send re-enforcements.' When the mes- 
sage reached the other end of the trench/' he said, "it 
was : 'Enemy advancing with ham shank. Send three 
and fourpence !' " 

It was a gay little meal, the only breaks in the con- 
versation when the great guns drowned out our voices. 
I wonder how many of those round that table are liv- 
ing to-day. Not all, it is almost certain. The German 
Army almost broke through the English line at that 
very point in the late spring. The brave Canadians 
have lost almost all their officers in the field and a 
sickening percentage of their men. That little valley 
must have run deep with blood since I saw it that day 
in the sunlight. 

Luncheon was over. I wrote my name in the 
visitors' book, to the tune of such a bombardment as 
almost forbade speech, and accompanied by General 

H we made our way down the steep hillside to 

the car. 

"Some time to-night I shall be in England," I said 
as I settled myself for the return trip. 

The smile died on the general's face. It was as if, 
in speaking of home, I had touched the hidden chord 
of gravity and responsibility that underlay the cheer- 
fulness of that cheery visit. 

"England!" he said. That was all. 

I looked back as the car started on. A battery was 
moving up along the road behind the hill. The sen- 
try stood by his low painted tent. The general was 
watching the car, his hand shading his eyes against the 
glare of the winter sun. Behind him rose his lonely 
hill, white with snow, with the little path leading, by 
devious ways, up its steep and shining side. 



298 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

It was not considered advisable to return by the 
road behind the trenches. The late afternoon artil- 
lery duel was going on. So we turned off a few 
miles south of the hill and left war behind us. 

Not altogether, of course. There were still trans- 
ports and troops. And at an intersection of three 
roads we were abruptly halted. A line of military 
cars was standing there, all peremptorily held up by 
a handful of soldiers. 

The young officer got out and inquired. There was 
little time to spare, for I was to get to Calais that 
evening, and to run the Channel blockade some time 
in the night. 

The officer came back soon, smiling. 

"A military secret!" he said. "We shall have to 
wait a little. The road is closed.' , 

So I sat in the car and the military secret went by. 
I cannot tell about it except that it was thrillingly 
interesting. My hands itched to get out my camera 
and photograph it, just as they itch now to write about 
it. But the mystery of what I saw on the highroad 
back of the British lines is not mine to tell. It must 
die with me ! 

My visit to the British lines was over. 

As I look back I find that the one thing that stands 
out with distinctness above everything else is the 
quality of the men that constitute the British Army in 
the field. I had seen thousands in that one day. But 
I had seen them also north of Ypres, at Dunkirk, at 
Boulogne and Calais, on the Channel boats, I have 
said before that they show race. But it is much more 
than a matter of physique. It is a thing of steady 
eyes, of high-held heads, of a clean thrust of jaw. 

The English are not demonstrative. London, com- 



THE MILITARY SECRET 299 

pared with Paris, is normal. British officers at the 
front and at headquarters treat the war as a part of 
the day's work, a thing not to talk about but to do. 
But my frequent meetings with British soldiers, naval 
men, members of the flying contingent and the army 
medical service, revealed under the surface of each 
man's quiet manner a grimness, a red heat of patriot- 
ism, a determination to fight fair but to fight to the 
death. 

They concede to the Germans, with the British 
sense of fairness, courage, science, infinite resource 
and patriotism. Two things they deny them, civilisa- 
tion and humanity — civilisation in its spiritual, not its 
material, side; humanity of the sort that is the Eng- 
lishman's creed and his religion — the safeguarding 
of noncombatants, the keeping of the national word 
and the national honour. 

My visit to the English lines was over. I had seen 
no valiant charges, no hand-to-hand fighting. But 
in a way I had had a larger picture. I had seen the 
efficiency of the methods behind the lines, the abun- 
dance of supplies, the spirit that glowed in the eyes of 
every fighting man. I had seen the colonial children 
of England in the field, volunteers who had risen to the 
call of the mother country. I had seen and talked 
with the commander-in-chief of the British forces, 
and had come away convinced that the mother 
country had placed her honour in fine and capable 
hands. And I had seen, between the first and second 
lines of trenches, an army of volunteers and patriots 
— and gentlemen. 



CHAPTER XXXI 
QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND 



/ I A HE great European war affects profoundly all 
■*■ the women of each nation involved. It affects 
doubly the royal women. The Queen of England, 
the Czarina of Russia, the Queen of the Belgians, the 
Empress of Germany, each carries in these momen- 
tous days a frightful burden. The young Prince of 
Wales is at the front; the King of the Belgians has 
been twice wounded; the Empress of Germany has 
her sons as well as her husband in the field. 

In addition to these cares these women of exalted 
rank have the responsibility that comes always to the 
very great. To see a world crisis approaching, to 
know every detail by which it has been furthered or 
retarded, to realise at last its inevitability — to see, in 
a word, every movement of the great drama and to 
be unable to check its denouement — that has been a 
part of their burden. And when the denouement came, 
to sink their private anxieties in the public welfare, 
to assume, not a double immunity but a double re- 
sponsibility to their people, has been the other part. 

It has required heroism of a high order. It is, to 
a certain extent, a new heroism, almost a demonstra- 
tion of the new faith whose foundation is respon- 
sibility — responsibility of a nation to its sons, of rul- 
ers to their people, of a man to his neighbour. 

300 



QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND 301 

It has been my privilege to meet and speak with 
two of these royal women, with the Queen of Eng- 
land and with the Queen of the Belgians. In each 
instance I carried away with me an ineradicable im- 
pression of this quality — of a grave and wearing re- 
sponsibility borne quietly and simply, of a quiet 
courage that buries its own griefs and asks only to 
help. 

From the beginning of the war I had felt a keen 
interest in the Queen of England. Here was a great 
queen who had chosen to be, first of all, a wife and 
mother ; a queen with courage and a conscience. And 
into her reign had come the tragedy of a war that 
affected every nation of the world, many of them 
directly, all of them indirectly. The war had come 
unsought, unexpected, unprepared for. Peaceful Eng- 
land had become a camp. The very palace in which 
the royal children were housed was open to an attack 
from a brutal enemy, which added to the new war- 
fare of this century the ethics of barbarism. 

What did she think of it all? What did she feel 
when that terrible Roll of Honour came in, week by 
week, that Roll of Honour with its photographs of 
splendid types of young manhood that no Anglo- 
Saxon can look at without a clutch at his throat? 
What did she think when, one by one, the friends of 
her girlhood put on the black of bereavement and 
went uncomplainingly about the good works in which 
hers was the guiding hand? What thoughts were 
hers during those anxious days before the Prince of 
Wales went to the front, when, like any other mother, 
she took every possible moment to be with him, walk- 
ing about arm-in-arm with her boy, talking of every- 
thing but the moment of parting? 






302 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

And when at last I was permitted to see the Queen 
of England, I understood a part at least of what she 
was suffering. I had been to the front. I had seen 
the English army in the field. I had been quite close 
to the very trenches where the boyish Prince of Wales 
was facing the enemies of his country and doing it 
with high courage. And I had heard the rumble of 
the great German guns, as Queen Mary of England 
must hear them in her sleep. 

Even with no son in the field the Queen of England 
would be working for the soldiers. It is a part of the 
tradition of her house. But a good mother is a mother 
to all the world. When Queen Mary is supervising- 
the great work of the Needlework Guild one feels sure 
that into each word of direction has gone a little addi- 
tional tenderness, because of this boy of hers at the 
front. 

It is because of Her Majesty's interest in the ma- 
terial well-being of the soldiers at the front, and be- 
cause of her most genuine gratitude for America's 
part in this well-being, that I took such pleasure in 
meeting the Queen of England. 

It was characteristic of Her Majesty that she put 
an American woman — a very nervous American 
woman — at her ease at once, that she showed that 
American woman the various departments of her 
Needlework Guild under way, and that she conveyed, 
in every word she said, a deep feeling of friendship 
for America and her assistance to Belgium in this 
crisis. 

Although our ambassadors are still accredited to 
the Court of St. James's, the old palace has ceased to 
be the royal residence. The King still holds there his 
levees, to which only gentlemen are admitted. But the 



QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND 303 

formal Drawing Rooms are held at Buckingham 
Palace. To those who have seen St. James's during a 
levee, or to those London tourists who have watched 
the Scots Guards, or the Coldstream or the Grenadiers, 
preceded by a splendid band, swinging into the old 
Friary Court to perform the impressive ceremony of 
changing guard, the change in these days of war is 
most amazing. Friary Court is guarded by London 
policemen, and filled with great vans piled high with 
garments and supplies for the front — that front where 
the Coldstream and the Grenadiers and the others, 
shorn of their magnificence, are waiting grimly in 
muddy trenches or leading charges to victory — or the 
Roll of Honour. Under the winter sky of London the 
crenelated towers and brick walls of the old palace 
give little indication of the former grandeur of this 
most historic of England's palaces, built on the 
site of an old leper hospital and still retaining the 
name of the saint to whom that hospital was dedi- 
cated. 

There had been a shower just before I arrived; 
and, although it was February, there was already a 
hint of spring in the air. The sun came out, drying 
the roads in the park close by, and shining brightly on 
the lovely English grass, green even then with the 
green of June at home. Riders, caught in the shower 
and standing by the sheltered sides of trees for pro- 
tection, took again to the bridle paths. The hollows 
of Friary Court were pools where birds were splash- 
ing. As I got out of my car a Boy Scout emerged 
from the palace and carried a large parcel to a waiting 
van. 

"Do you want the Q. M. N. G. ?" said a tall police- 
man. 



304 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

This, being interpreted, I was given to understand 
was Queen Mary's Needlework Guild. 

Later on, when I was taken to Buckingham Palace 
to write my name in the Queen's book, which is eti- 
quette after a presentation, there was all the formality 
the visit to St. James's had lacked — the drive into the 
inclosure, where the guard was changing, the stately 
footmen, the great book with its pages containing the 
dignitaries and great people of all the earth. 

But the Boy Scout and the policeman had restored 
my failing courage that day at St. James's Palace. 
Except for a tendency to breathe at twice my normal 
rate as the Queen entered the room I felt almost calm. 

As she advanced toward us, stopping to speak cor- 
dially to the various ladies who are carrying on the 
work of the Guild for her, I had an opportunity to 
see this royal woman who has suffered so grossly 
from the camera. 

It will be a surprise to many Americans to learn 
that the Queen of England is very lovely to look at. 
So much emphasis has always been placed on her vir- 
tues, and so little has been written of her charm, that 
this tribute is only fair to Her Majesty. She is tali, 
perhaps five feet eight inches, with deep-blue eyes and 
beautiful colouring. She has a rather wide, humorous 
mouth. There is not a trace of austerity in her face 
or in any single feature. The whole impression was 
of sincerity and kindliness, with more than a trace 
of humour. 

I could quite believe, after I saw Her Majesty, the 
delightful story that I had heard from a member of 
her own circle, that now and then, when during some 
court solemnity an absurdity occurred, it was posi- 
tively dangerous to catch the Queen's eye! 



QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND 305 

Queen Mary came up the long room. As she 
paused and held out her hand, each lady took it and 
curtsied at the same time. The Queen talked, smiling 
as she spoke. There was no formality. Near at hand 
the lady-in-waiting who was in attendance stood, 
sometimes listening, sometimes joining in the conver- 
sation. The talk was all of supplies, for these days in 
England one thinks in terms of war. Certain things 
had come in; other things had gone or were going. 
For the Queen of England is to-day at the head of a 
great business, one that in a few months has already 
collected and distributed over a million garments, all 
new, all practical, all of excellent quality. 

The Queen came toward me and paused. There 
was an agonised moment while the lady-in-waiting 
presented me. Her Majesty held out her hand. I took 
it and bowed. The next instant she was speaking. 

She spoke at once of America, of what had already 
been done by Americans for the Belgians both in Eng- 
land and in their desolated country. And she hastened 
to add her gratitude for the support they have given 
her Guild. 

"The response has been more than generous," said 
Her Majesty. "We are very grateful. We are glad 
to find that the sympathy of America is with us." 

She expressed a desire also to have America know 
fully just what was being done with the supplies that 
are being constantly sent over, both from Canada and 
from the United States. 

"Canada has been wonderful," she said. "They are 
doing everything." 

The ready response of Canada to the demand for 
both troops and supplies appeared to have touched Her 
Majesty. She spoke at length about the troops, the 



306 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

distance they had come, the fine appearance the men 
made, and their popularity with the crowds when they 
paraded on the streets of London. I had already 
noticed this. A Canadian regiment was sure to elicit 
cheers at any time, although London, generally speak- 
ing, has ceased any but silent demonstration over the 
soldiers. 

"Have you seen any of the English hospitals on the 
Continent?" the Queen asked. 

"I have seen a number, Your Majesty." 

"Do they seem well supplied?" 

I replied that they appeared to be thoroughly 
equipped, but that the amount of supplies required was 
terrifying and that at one time some of the hospitals 
had experienced difficulty in securing what they needed. 

"One hospital in Calais," I said, "received twelve 
thousand pairs of bed socks in one week last autumn, 
and could not get a bandage." 

"Those things happened early in the war. We are 
doing much better now. England had not expected 
war. We were totally unprepared." 

And in the great analysis that is to come, that speech 
of the Queen of England is the answer to many ques- 
tions. England had not expected war. Every roll 
of the drum as the men of the new army march along 
the streets, every readjustment necessary to a peaceful 
people suddenly thrust into war, every month added 
to the length of time it has taken to put England in 
force into the field, shifts the responsibility to where 
it belongs. Back of all fine questions of diplomatic 
negotiation stands this one undeniable fact. To deny 
it is absurd; to accept it is final. 

"What is your impression of the French and Belgian 
hospitals?" Her Majesty inquired. 



QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND 307 

I replied that none were so good as the English, 
that France had always depended on her nuns in such 
emergencies, and, there being no nuns in France now, 
her hospital situation was still not good. 

"The priests of Belgium are doing wonderful work," 
I said. "They have suffered terribly during the war." 

"It is very terrible," said Her Majesty. "Both 
priests and nuns have suffered, as England has reason 
to know." 

The Queen spoke of the ladies connected with the 
Guild. 

"They are really much overworked," she said. 
"They are giving all their time day after day. They 
are splendid. And many of them, of course, are in 
great anxiety." 

Already, by her tact and her simplicity of manner, 
she had put me at my ease. The greatest people, I 
have found, have this quality of simplicity. When she 
spoke of the anxieties of her ladies, I wished that I 
could have conveyed to her, from so many Americans, 
their sympathy in her own anxieties, so keen at that 
time, so unselfishly borne. But the lady-in-waiting 
was speaking: 

"Please tell the Queen about your meeting with 
King Albert." 

So I told about it. It had been unconventional, and 
the recital amused Her Majesty. It was then that I 
realised how humorous her mouth was, how very 
blue and alert her eyes. I told it all to her, the things 
that insisted on slipping off my lap, and the King's 
picking them up ; the old envelope he gave me on which 
to make notes of the interview; how I had asked him 
whether he would let me know when the interview 
was over, or whether I ought to get up and go! And 



308 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

finally, when we were standing talking before my 
departure, how I had suddenly remembered that I 
was not to stand nearer to His Majesty than six feet, 
and had hastily backed away and explained, to his 
great amusement. 

Queen Mary laughed. Then her face clouded. 

"It is all so very tragic," she said. "Have you seen 
the Queen ?" 

I replied that the Queen of the Belgians had received 
me a few days after my conversation with the King. 

"She is very sad," said Her Majesty. "It is a ter- 
rible thing for her, especially as she is a Bavarian by 
birth." 

From that to the ever-imminent subject of the war 
itself was but a step. An English officer had recently 
made a sensational escape from a German prison camp, 
and having at last got back to England, had been sent 
for by the King. With the strange inconsistencies 
that seem to characterise the behaviour of the Ger- 
mans, the man to whom he had surrendered after a 
gallant defence had treated him rather well. But 
from that time on his story was one of brutalities and 
starvation. 

The officer in question had told me his story, and I 
ventured to refer to it. Her Majesty knew it quite 
well, and there was no mistaking the grief in her 
voice as she commented on it, especially on that part 
of it which showed discrimination against the British 

prisoners. Major V had especially emphasised 

the lack of food for the private soldiers and the fear- 
ful trials of being taken back along the lines of com- 
munication, some fifty-two men being locked in one of 
the small Continental box cars which are built to carry 
only six horses. Many of them were wounded. They 



QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND 309 

were obliged to stand, the floor of the car being inches 
deep with filth. For thirty hours they had no water 
and no air, and for three days and three nights no 
food. 

"I am to publish Major V 's statement in Amer- 
ica, Your Majesty," I said. 

"I think America should know it," said the Queen. 
"It is most unjust. German prisoners in England are 
well cared for. They are well fed, and games and 
other amusements are provided for them. They even 
play football!" 

I stepped back as Her Majesty prepared to continue 
her visit round the long room. But she indicated that 
I was to accompany her. It was then that one realised 
that the Queen of England is the intensely practical 
daughter of a practical mother. Nothing that is done 
in this Guild, the successor of a similar guild founded 
by the late Duchess of Teck, Her Majesty's mother, 
escapes her notice. No detail is too small if it makes 
for efficiency. She selected at random garments from 
the tables, and examined them for warmth, for qual- 
ity, for utility. 

Generally she approved. Before a great heap of 
heavy socks she paused. 

"The soldiers like the knitted ones, we are told," 
she said. "These are not all knitted but they are very 
warm." 

A baby sweater of a hideous yellow roused in her 
something like wrath. 

"All that labour !" she said, "and such a colour for a 
little baby !" And again, when she happened on a pair 
of felt slippers, quite the largest slippers I have ever 
seen, she fell silent in sheer amazement. They amused 
her even while they shocked her. And again, as she 



310 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

smiled, I regretted that the photographs of the Queen 
of England may not show her smiling. 

A small canvas case, skilfully rolled and fastened, 
caught Her Majesty's attention. She opened it her- 
self and revealed with evident pride its numerous con- 
tents. Many thousands of such cases had already 
been sent to the army. 

This one was a model of packing. It contained in 
its small compass an extraordinary number of things 
■ — changes of under flannels, extra socks, an abdominal 
belt, and, in an inclosure, towel, soap, toothbrush, 
nailbrush and tooth powder. I am not certain, but I 
believe there was also a pack of cards. 

"I am afraid I should never be able to get it all back 
again !" said Her Majesty. So one of the ladies took 
it in charge, and the Queen went on. 

My audience was over. As Her Majesty passed me 
she held out her hand. I took it and curtsied. 

"Were you not frightened the night you were in 
the Belgian trenches?" she inquired. 

"Not half so frightened as I was this afternoon, 
Your Majesty/' I replied. 

She passed on, smiling. 

And now, when enough time has elapsed to give 
perspective to my first impression of Queen Mary of 
England, I find that it loses nothing by this supreme 
test. I find that I remember her, not as a great Queen 
but as a gracious and kindly woman, greatly beloved 
by those of her immediate circle, totally without arro- 
gance, and of a simplicity of speech and manner that 
must put to shame at times those lesser lights that 
group themselves about a throne. 

I find another impression also — that the Queen of 



QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND 311 

England is intensely and alertly mental — alive to her 
finger tips, we should say in America. She has always 
been active. Her days are crowded. A different type 
of royal woman would be content to be the honoured 
head of the Queen's Guild. But she is in close touch 
with it at all times. It is she who dictates its policy, 
and so competently that the ladies who are associated 
with the work that is being done speak of her with 
admiration not unmixed with awe. 

From a close and devoted friend of Queen Mary I 
obtained other characteristics to add to my picture: 
That the Queen is acutely sensitive to pain or distress 
in others — it hurts her ; that she is punctual — and this 
not because of any particular sense of time but because 
she does not like to keep other people waiting. It is 
all a part of an overwhelming sense of that responsi- 
bility to others that has its origin in true kindliness. 

The work of the Queen's Guild is surprising in its 
scope. In a way it is a vast clearing house. Supplies 
come in from every part of the world, from India, 
Ceylon, Java, Alaska, South America, from the most 
remote places. I saw the record book. I saw that a 
woman from my home city had sent cigarettes to the 
soldiers through the Guild, that Africa had sent flan- 
nels! Coming from a land where the sending, as 
regards Africa, is all the other way, I found this 
exciting. Indeed, the whole record seems to show 
how very small the earth is, and how the tragedy of a 
great war has overcome the barriers of distance and 
time and language. 

From this clearing house in England's historic old 
palace, built so long ago by Bluff King Hal, these 
offerings of the world are sent wherever there is need, 
to Servia, to Egypt, to South and East Africa, to the 



312 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

Belgians. The work was instituted by the Queen the 
moment war broke out, and three things are being very 
carefully insured : That a real want exists, that the 
clothing reaches its proper destination, and that there 
shall be no overlapping. 

The result has been most gratifying to the Queen, 
but it was difficult to get so huge a business — for, as 
I have already said, it is a business now — under way 
at the beginning. Demand was insistent. There was 
no time to organise a system in advance. It had to be 
worked out in actual practice. 

One of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting wrote in Feb- 
ruary, apropos of the human element in the work : 

"There was a great deal of human element in the 
start with its various mistakes. The Queen wished, on 
the breaking out of war, to start the Guild in such a 
way as to prevent the waste and overlapping which 
occurred in the Boer War. . . . The fact that the 
ladies connected with the work have toiled daily and 
unceasingly for seven months is the most wonderful 
part of it all." 

Before Christmas nine hundred and seventy thous- 
and belts and socks were collected and sent as a spe- 
cial gift to the soldiers at the front, from the Queen 
and the women of the empire. That in itself is an 
amazing record of efficiency. 

It is rather comforting to know that there were 
mistakes in the beginning. It is so human. It is com- 
forting to think of this exceedingly human Queen 
being a party to them, and being divided between 
annoyance and mirth as they developed. It is very 
comforting also to think that, in the end, they were 
rectified. 

We had a similar situation during our Civil War. 



QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND 313 

There were mistakes then also, and they too were 
rectified. What the heroic women of the North and 
South did during that great conflict the women of 
Great Britain are doing to-day. They are showing 
the same high and courageous spirit, the same subor- 
dination of their personal griefs to the national cause, 
the same cheerful relinquishment of luxuries. It is 
a United Britain that confronts the enemy in France. 
It is a united womanhood, united in spirit, in labour, in 
faith and high moral courage, that looks east across 
the Channel to that land beyond the horizon, "some- 
where in France," where the Empire is fighting for 
life. 

A united womanhood, and at its head a steadfast 
and courageous Queen and mother, Mary of England. 



CHAPTER XXXII 
THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS 



/^\ N the third of August, 19 14, the German Army 
^S crossed the frontier into Belgium. And on the 
following day, the fourth, King Albert made his now 
famous speech to the joint meeting of the Belgian 
Chamber and Senate. Come what might, the Belgian 
people would maintain the freedom that was their 
birthright. 

"I have faith in our destinies," King Albert con- 
cluded. "A country which defends itself wins re- 
spect and cannot perish." 

With these simple and dignified words Belgium took 
up the struggle. She was beaten before she began, 
and she knew it. No matter what the ultimate out- 
come of the war, she must lose. The havoc would be 
hers. The old battleground of Europe knew what 
war meant; no country in the world knew better. 
And, knowing, Belgium took up the burden. 

To-day, Belgium is prostrate. That she lives, that 
she will rise again, no Belgian doubts. It may be after 
months — even after years; but never for a moment 
can there be any doubt of the national integrity. The 
Germans are in Belgium, but not of it. Belgium is 
still Belgium — not a part of the German Empire. 
Until the Germans are driven out she is waiting. 

As I write this, one corner of her territory remains 

314 



THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS 315 

to her, a wedge-shaped piece, ten miles or so in width 
at the coast, narrowing to nothing at a point less than 
thirty miles inland. And in that tragic fragment there 
remains hardly an undestroyed town. Her revenues 
are gone, being collected as an indemnity, for God 
knows what, by the Germans. King Albert himself 
has been injured. The Queen of the Belgians has 
pawned her jewels. The royal children are refugees 
in England. Two-thirds of the army is gone. And, 
of even that tiny remaining corner, much is covered 
by the salt floods of the sea. 

The King of the Belgians is often heard of. We 
hear of him at the head of his army, consulting his 
staff, reviewing his weary and decimated troops. We 
know his calibre now, both as man and soldier. He 
stands out as one of the truly heroic figures of the war. 

But what of the Bavarian-born Queen of the Bel- 
gians? What of this royal woman who has lost the 
land of her nativity through the same war that has 
cost her the country of her adoption; who must see 
her husband go each day to the battle line ; who must 
herself live under the shadow of hostile aeroplanes, 
within earshot of the enemy's guns? What was she 
thinking of during those fateful hours when, all night 
long, King Albert and his Ministers debated the course 
of Belgium — a shameful immunity, or a war? What 
does she think now, when, before the windows of her 
villa at La Panne, the ragged and weary remnant of 
the brave Belgian Army lines up for review? What 
does she hope for and pray for — this Queen without a 
country ? 

What she thinks we cannot know. What she hopes 
for we may guess — the end of war; the return of her 
faithful people to their homes; the reunion of families; 



316 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

that the guns will cease firing, so the long lines of 
ambulances will no longer fill the roads; that the 
wounded will recover ; and that those that grieve may 
be comforted. 

She has pawned her jewels. When I saw her she 
wore a thin gold chain round her neck, and on it a 
tiny gold heart. I believe she has sacrificed everything 
else. Royal jewels have been pawned before this — 
to support extravagant mistresses or to bolster a 
crumbling throne; but Elisabeth of Belgium has 
pawned her jewels to buy supplies for wounded sol- 
diers. Battle-scarred old Belgium has not always had 
a clean slate; but certainly this act of a generous and 
devoted queen should mark off many scores. 

The Queen is living at La Panne, a tiny fishing vil- 
lage and resort on the coast — an ugly village, robbed 
of quaintness by its rows of villas owned by summer 
visitors. The villas are red and yellow brick, built 
chateau fashion and set at random on the sand. Ef- 
forts at lawns have proved abortive. The encroaching 
dunes gradually cover the grass. Here and there are 
streets; and there is one main thoroughfare, along 
which is a tramway that formerly connected the town 
with other villages. 

On one side the sea; on the other the dunes, with 
little shade and no beauty — such is the location of the 
new capital of Belgium. And here, in one of the six 
small villas that house the court, the King and Queen 
of Belgium, with the Crown Prince, are living. They 
live very quietly, walking together along the sands at 
those times when King Albert is not with his troops, 
faring simply, waiting always — as all Belgium is wait- 
ing to-day. Waiting for the end of this terrible 
time. 



THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS 317 

I asked a member of the royal household what they 
did during those long winter evenings, when the only 
sounds in the little village were the wash of the sea 
and the continual rumble of the artillery at Nieuport. 

"What can we do?" he replied. "My wife and chil- 
dren are in Brussels. It is not possible to read, and it 
is not wise to think too much. We wait." 

But waiting does not imply inaction. The members 
of His Majesty's household are all officers in the army. 
I saw only one gentleman in civilian dress, and he was 
the King's secretary, M. Ingenbleek. The King heads 
this activity, and the Queen of the Belgians is never 
idle. The Ocean Ambulance, the great Belgian base 
hospital, is under her active supervision, and its loca- 
tion near the royal villa makes it possible for her to 
visit it daily. She knows the wounded soldiers, who 
adore her. Indeed, she is frankly beloved by the army. 
Her appearance is always the signal for a demonstra- 
tion ; and again and again I saw copies of her photo- 
graph nailed up in sentry huts, in soldiers' billets, in 
battered buildings that were temporary headquarters 
for divisions of the army. 

In return for this devotion the young Queen regards 
the welfare of the troops as her especial charge. She 
visits them when they are wounded, and many tales 
are told of her keen memory for their troubles. One, 
a wounded Frenchman, had lost his pipe when he was 
injured. As he recovered he mourned his pipe. Other 
pipes were offered, but they were not the same. There 
had been something about the curve of the stem of the 
old one, or the shape of the bowl — whatever it was, 
he missed it. And it had been his sole possession. 

At last the Queen of the Belgians had him describe 
the old pipe exactly. I believe he made a drawing — 



318 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

and she secured a duplicate of it for him. He told 
me the story himself. 

The Queen had wished to go to the trenches to see 
the wretchedness of conditions at the front, and to 
discover what she could do to ameliorate them. One 
excursion she had been permitted at the time I saw 
her, to the great anxiety of those who knew of the 
trip. She was quite fearless, and went into one of the 
trenches at the railroad embankment of Pervyse. I 
saw that trench afterward. It was proudly decorated 
with a sign that said: Repose de la Reine. And 
above the board was the plaster head of a saint, from 
one of the churches. Both sign and head, needless to 
say, were carefully protected from German bullets. 

Everywhere I went I found evidences of devotion 
to this girlish and tender-hearted Queen. I was told 
of her farewell to the leading officials of the army and 
of the court, when, having remained to the last possible 
moment, King Albert insisted on her departure from 
Brussels. I was told of her incognito excursions 
across the dangerous Channel to see her children in 
England. I was told of her single-hearted devotion to 
the King; her belief in him; her confidence that he can: 
do no wrong. 

So, when a great and bearded individual, much given 
to bowing, presented himself at the door of my room 
in the hotel at Dunkirk, and extended to me a notifica- 
tion that the Queen of the Belgians would receive me 
the next day at the royal villa at La Panne, I was 
keenly expectant. 

I went over my wardrobe. It was exceedingly lim- 
ited and more than a little worn. Furs would cover 
some of the deficiencies, but there was a difficulty about 
shoe buttons. Dunkirk apparently laces its shoes., 



THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS 319 

After a period of desperation, two top buttons were 
removed and sewed on lower down, where they would 
do the most good. That and much brushing was all 
that was possible, my total war equipment comprising 
one small suitcase, two large notebooks and a fountain 
pen. 

I had been invited to lunch at a town on my way 
to La Panne, but the luncheon was deferred. When I 
passed through my would-be entertainer was eating 
bully beef out of a tin, with a cracker or two; and 
shells were falling inhospitably. Suddenly I was not 
hungry. I did not care for food. I did not care to 
stop to talk about food. It was a very small town, and 
there were bricks and glass and plaster in the streets. 
There were almost no people, and those who were 
there were hastily preparing for flight. 

It was a wonderful Sunday afternoon, brilliantly 
sunny. A German aeroplane hung overhead and called 
the bull's-eyes. From the plain near they were firing 
at it, but the shells burst below. One could see how 
far they fell short by the clouds of smoke that hung 
suspended beneath it, floating like shadowy balloons. 

I felt that the aeroplane had its eyes on my car. 
They drop darts — do the aeroplanes — two hundred and 
more at a time ; small pencil-shaped arrows of steel, six 
inches long, extremely sharp and weighted at the point 
end. I did not want to die by a dart. I did not want 
to die by a shell. As a matter of fact, I did not want 
to die at all. 

So the car went on; and, luncheonless, I met the 
Queen of the Belgians. 

The royal villa at La Panne faces the sea. It is at 
the end of the village and the encroaching dunes have 
ruined what was meant to be a small lawn. The long 



320 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

grass that grows out of the sand is the only vegetation 
about it; and outside, half-buried in the dune, is a 
marble seat. A sentry box or two, and sentries with 
carbines pacing along the sand; the constant swish 
of the sea wind through the dead winter grass; the 
half -buried garden seat — that is what the Queen of the 
Belgians sees as she looks from the window of her 
villa. 

The villa itself is small and ugly. The furnishing 
is the furnishing of a summer seaside cottage. The 
windows fit badly and rattle in the gale. In the long 
drawing room — really a living room — in which I 
waited for the Queen, a heavy red curtain had been 
hung across the lower part of the long French windows 
that face the sea, to keep out the draft. With that and 
an open coal fire the room was fairly comfortable. 

As I waited I looked about. Rather a long room 
this, which has seen so many momentous discussions, 
so much tragedy and real grief. A chaotic room too; 
for, in addition to its typical villa furnishing of chintz- 
covered chairs and a sofa or two, an ordinary pine 
table by a side window was littered with papers. 

On a centre table were books — H. G. Wells' "The 
War in the Air" ; two American books writen by corre- 
spondents who had witnessed the invasion of Belgium; 
and several newspapers. A hideous marble bust on a 
pedestal occupied a corner, and along a wall was a 
very small cottage piano. On the white marble mantel 
were a clock and two candlesticks. Except for a great 
basket of heather on a stand — a gift to Her Majesty — 
the room was evidently just as its previous owners had 
left it. A screen just inside the door, a rather worn 
rug on the floor, and a small brocade settee by the 
fireplace completed the furnishing. 



THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS 321 

The door opened and the Queen entered without 
ceremony. I had not seen her before. In her simple 
blue dress, with its white lawn collar and cuffs, she 
looked even more girlish than I had anticipated. Like 
Queen Mary of England, she had suffered from the 
camera. She is indeed strikingly beautiful, with lovely 
colouring and hair, and with very direct wide eyes, 
set far apart. She is small and slender, and moves 
quickly. She speaks beautiful English, in that softly 
inflected voice of the Continent which is the envy of 
all American women. 

I bowed as she entered; and she shook hands with 
me at once and asked me to sit down. She sat on the 
sofa by the fireplace. Like the Queen of England, like 
King Albert, her first words were of gratitude to 
America. 

It is not my intention to record here anything but 
the substance of my conversation with Queen Elisabeth 
of Belgium. Much that was said was the free and 
unrestricted speech of two women, talking over to- 
gether a situation which was tragic to them both ; for 
Queen Elisabeth allowed me to forget, as I think she 
had ceased to remember, her own exalted rank, in her 
anxiety for her people. 

A devoted churchwoman, she grieved over the 
treatment accorded by the invading German Army to 
the priests and nuns of Belgium. She referred to her 
own Bavarian birth, and to the confidence both King 
Albert and she had always felt in the friendliness of 
Germany. 

"I am a Bavarian," she said. "I have always, from 
my childhood, heard this talk that Germany must grow, 
must get to the sea. I thought it was just talk — a 
pleasantry!" 



322 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

She had seen many of the diaries of German sol- 
diers, had read them in the very room where we were 
sitting. She went quite white over the recollection and 
closed her eyes. 

"It is the women and children!" she said. "It is 
terrible! There must be killing. That is war. But 
not this other thing." 

And later on she said, in reference to German criti- 
cism of King Albert's course during the early days of 
the war: 

"Any one who knows the King knows that he can- 
not do a wrong thing. It is impossible for him. He 
cannot go any way but straight." 

And Queen Elisabeth was right. Any one who 
knows King Albert of Belgium knows that "he cannot 
go any way but straight." 

The conversation shifted to the wounded soldiers 
and to the Queen's anxiety for them. I spoke of her 
hospital as being a remarkable one — practically under 
fire, but moving as smoothly as a great American in- 
stitution, thousands of miles from danger. She had 
looked very sad, but at the mention of the Ocean 
Ambulance her face brightened. She spoke of its 
equipment; of the difficulty in securing supplies; of the 
new surgery, which has saved so many limbs from 
amputation. They were installing new and larger 
sterilisers, she said. 

"Things are in as good condition as can be expected 
now," she said. "The next problem will come when 
we get back into our own country. What are the 
people to do? So many of the towns are gone; so 
many farms are razed !" 

The Queen spoke of Brand Whitlock and praised 
highly his work in Brussels. From that to the relief 



THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS 323 

work was only a step. I spoke of the interest America 
was taking in the relief work, and of the desire of so 
many American women to help. 

"We are grateful for anything," she said. "The 
army seems to be as comfortable as is possible under 
the circumstances; but the people, of course, need 
every thing." 

Inevitably the conversation turned again to the treat- 
ment of the Belgian people by the Germans; to the 
unnecessary and brutal murders of noncombatants ; to 
the frightful rapine and pillage of the early months of 
the war. Her Majesty could not understand the scep- 
ticism of America on this point. I suggested that it 
was difficult to say what any army would do when it 
found itself in a prostrate and conquered land. 

"The Belgian Army would never have behaved so," 
said Her Majesty. "Nor the English; nor the French. 
Never!" 

And the Queen of the Belgians is a German! True, 
she has suffered much. Perhaps she is embittered ; but 
there was no bitterness in her voice that afternoon in 
the little villa at La Panne — only sadness and great 
sorrow and, with it, deep conviction. What Queen 
Elisabeth of Belgium says, she believes; and who 
should know better? There, to that house on the sea 
front, in the fragment of Belgium that remains, go all 
the hideous details that are war. She knows them all. 
King Albert is not a figure-head ; he is the actual fight- 
ing head of his army. The murder of Belgium has 
been done before his very eyes. 

In those long evenings when he has returned from 
headquarters ; when he and Queen Elisabeth sit by the 
fire in the room that overlooks the sea; when every 
blast that shakes the windows reminds them both of 



324 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

that little army, twothirds gone, shivering in the 
trenches only a mile or two away, or of their people 
beyond the dead line, suffering both deprivation and 
terror — what pictures do they see in the glowing coals ? 

It is not hard to know. Queen Elisabeth sees her 
children, and the puzzled, boyish faces of those who 
are going down to> the darkness of death that another 
nation may find a place in the sun. 

What King Albert sees may not all be written ; but 
this is certain: Both these royal exiles — this Soldier- 
King who has won and deserved the admiration of the 
world ; this Queen who refuses to leave her husband 
and her wounded, though day after day hostile aero- 
planes are overhead and the roar of German guns is 
in her ears — these royal exiles live in hope and in deep 
conviction. They will return to Belgium. Their coun- 
try will be theirs again. Their houses will be restored ; 
their fields will be sown and yield harvest — not for 
Germany, but for Belgium. Belgium, as Belgium, 
will live again ! 



CHAPTER XXXIII 
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 



T MMEDIATELY on the declaration of war by the 
-■■ Powers the vast machinery of mercy was put in 
the field. The mobilisation of the Red Cross army 
began — that great army which is of no nation, but of 
all nations, of no creed but of all faiths, of one flag 
for all the world and that flag the banner of the 
Crusaders. 

The Red Cross is the wounded soldier's last defence. 
Worn as a brassard on the left arm of its volunteers, 
it conveys a higher message than the Victoria Cross of 
England, the Iron Cross of Germany, or the Cross of 
the Legion of Honour of France. It is greater than 
cannon, greater than hate, greater than blood-lust, 
greater than vengeance. It triumphs over wrath as 
good triumphs over evil. Direct descendant of the 
cross of the Christian faith, it carries on to every 
battlefield the words of the Man of Peace : "Blessed 
are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." 

The care of the wounded in war has been the 
problem of the ages. Richard the Lion-Hearted took 
a hospital ship to the coast of Palestine. The German 
people of the Middle Ages had their wounded in battle 
treated by their wives, who followed the army for that 
purpose. It remained for Frederick the First of P'rus- 

325 



326 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

sia to establish a military service in connection with a 
standing army. 

With the invention of firearms battlefield surgery 
faced new problems, notably hemorrhage, and took a 
step forward to meet these altered conditions. It was 
a French surgeon who solved the problem of hemor- 
rhage by tying the torn blood vessels above the injury. 
To England goes the credit for the prevention of sepsis, 
as far as it may be prevented on a battlefield. 

As far as it may be prevented on a battlefield ! For 
that is the question that confronts the machinery of 
mercy to-day. Transportation to the hospitals has been 
solved, to a large extent, by motor ambulances, by hos- 
pital trains, by converted channel steamers connecting 
the Continent with England. Hospitals in the western 
field of war are now plentiful and some are well 
equipped. The days of bedding wounded men down on 
straw are largely in the past, but how to prevent the 
ravages of dirt, the so-called "dirt diseases" of gaseous 
gangrene, blood poisoning, tetanus, is the problem. 

I did not see the first exchange of hopelessly 
wounded prisoners that took place at Flushing, while I 
was on the Continent. It must have been a tragic 
sight. They lined up in two parties at the railroad sta- 
tion, German surgeons and nurses with British prison- 
ers, British surgeons and nurses with German prison- 
ers. 

Then they were counted off, I am told. Ten Ger- 
mans came forward, ten British, in wheeled chairs, on 
crutches, the sightless ones led. The exchange was 
made. Then ten more, and so on. What a sight! 
What a horror ! No man there would ever be whole 
again. There were men without legs, without arms, 
blind men, men twisted by fearful body wounds. Two 



THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 327 

hundred and sixteen British officers and men, and as 
many Germans, were exchanged that day. 

"They were, however, in the best of spirits," said 
the London Times of the next day ! 

At Folkestone a crowd was waiting on the quay, 
and one may be sure that heads were uncovered as the 
men limped, or were led or wheeled, down the gang- 
plank. Kindly English women gave them nosegays of 
snowdrops and violets. 

And then they went on — to what? For a few 
weeks, or months, they will be the objects of much 
kindly sympathy. In the little towns where they live 
visitors will be taken to see them. The neighbourhood 
will exert itself in kindness. But after a time interest 
will die away, and besides, there will be many to di- 
vide sympathy. The blind man, or the man without 
a leg or an arm, will cease to be the neighbourhood's 
responsibility and will become its burden. 

What then? For that is the problem that is facing 
each nation at war — to make a whole life out of a 
fragment, to teach that the spirit may be greater than 
the body, to turn to usefulness these sad and hopeless 
by-products of battlefields. 

The ravages of war — to the lay mind — consist 
mainly of wounds. Asi a matter of fact, they divide 
themselves into several classes, all different, all re- 
quiring different care, handling and treatment, and all, 
in their several ways, dependent for help on the ma- 
chinery of mercy. In addition to injuries on the battle- 
field there are illnesses contracted on the field, septic 
conditions following even slight abrasions or minor 
wounds, and nervous conditions — sometimes approxi- 
mating a temporary insanity — due to prolonged strain, 
to incessant firing close at hand, to depression follow- 



328 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

ing continual lack of success, to* the sordid and hideous 
conditions of unburied dead, rotting in full view for 
weeks and even months. 

During the winter frozen feet, sometimes requir- 
ing amputation, and even in mild cases entailing 
great suffering, took thousands of men out of the 
trenches. The trouble resulted from standing for 
hours and even days in various depths of cold water, 
and was sometimes given the name "waterbite." Sol- 
diers were instructed to rub their boots inside and out 
with whale oil, and to grease their feet and legs. 
Unluckily, only fortunately situated men could be so 
supplied, and the suffering was terrible. Surgeons who 
have observed many cases of both frost and water bite 
say that, curiously enough, the left foot is more fre- 
quently and seriously affected than the right. The 
reason given is that right-handed men automatically 
use the right foot more than the left, make more 
movements with it. The order to remove boots twice 
a day, for a few moments while in the trenches, had a 
beneficial effect among certain battalions. 

The British soldier who wraps tightly a khaki puttee 
round his leg and thus hampers circulation has been 
a particular sufferer from frostbite in spite of the pre- 
caution he takes to grease his feet and legs before go- 
ing into the trenches. 

The presence of septic conditions has been appalling. 

This is a dirty war. Men are taken back to* the 
hospitals in incredible states of filth. Their stiffened 
clothing must frequently be cut off to reveal, beneath, 
vermin-covered bodies. When the problem of trans- 
portation is a serious one, as after a great battle, men 
must lie in sheds or railway stations, waiting their 
turn. Wounds turn green and hideous. Their first-aid 



THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 329 

dressing, originally surgically clean, becomes infected. 
Lucky the man who has had a small vial of iodine to 
pour over the gaping surface of his wound. For the 
time, at least, he is well off. 

The very soil of Flanders seems polluted. British 
surgeons are sighing for the clean dust of the Boer 
war of South Africa, although they cursed it at the 
time. That it is not the army occupation which is 
causing the grave infections of Flanders and France is 
shown by the fact that the trouble dates from the 
beginning of the war. It is not that living in a trench 
undermines the vitality of the men and lays them open 
to infection. On the contrary, with the exception of 
frost bite, there is a curious absence of such troubles 
as would ordinarily result from exposure, cold and 
constant wetting. 

The open-air life has apparently built up the men. 
Again and again the extraordinary power of resistance 
shown has astonished the surgeons. It is as if, in 
forcing men to face overwhelming hardships, a watch- 
ful Providence had granted them overwhelming vi- 
tality. 

Perhaps the infection of the soil, the typhoid-carry- 
ing waters that seep through and into the trenches, the 
tetanus and gangrene that may infect the simplest 
wounds, are due to the long intensive cultivation of 
that fertile country, to the fertilisation by organic mat- 
ter of its fields. Doubtless the vermin that cover many 
of the troops form the connecting link between the 
soil and the infected men. In many places gasoline 
is being delivered to the troopers to kill these pests, 
and it is a German army joke that before a charge on 
a Russian trench it is necessary to send ahead men to 
scatter insect powder! So serious is the problem ill 



330 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

the east indeed that an official order from Berlin now 
requires all cars returning from Russia to be placarded 
"Aus Russland! Before using again thoroughly ster- 
ilise and unlouse!' , And no upholstered cars are al- 
lowed to be used. 

Generally speaking, a soldier is injured either in his 
trench or in front of it in the waste land between the 
confronting armies. In the latter case, if the lines are 
close together the situation is still further complicated. 
It may be and often is impossible to reach him at all. 
He must lie there for hours or even for days of suffer- 
ing, until merciful death overtakes him. When he can 
be rescued he is, and many of the bravest deeds of 
this war have been acts of such salvage. In addition 
to the work of the ambulance corps and of volunteer 
soldiers who often venture out into a rain of death to 
bring in fallen officers and comrades in the western 
field, some five hundred ambulance dogs are being used 
by the Allies to locate the wounded. 

When a man is injured in the trenches his com- 
panions take care of him until night, when it is possi- 
ble to move him. His first-aid packet is opened, a 
sterilised bandage produced, and the dressing applied 
to the wound. Frequently he has a small bottle of 
iodine and the wound is first painted with that. In 
cases where iodine is used at once, chances of infection 
are greatly lessened. But often he must lie in the 
trench until night, when the ambulances come up. His 
comrades make him as comfortable as they can. He 
lies on their overcoats, his head frequently on his own 
pack. 

Fighting goes on about him, above him. Other 
comrades fall in the trench and are carried and laid 
near him. In the intervals of fighting, men bring the 



THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 331 

injured men water. For that is the first cry — a great 
and insistent need — water. When they cannot get 
water from the canteens they drink what is in the 
bottom of the trench. 

At last night falls. The evening artillery duel, ex- 
cept when a charge is anticipated, is greatly lessened 
at night, and infantry fire is only that of "snipers." 
But over the trench and over the line of communica- 
tion behind the trench hang always the enemy's "star- 
lights." 

The ambulances come up. They cannot come as far 
as the trenches, but stretchers are brought and the 
wounded men are lifted out as tenderly as possible. 

Many soldiers have tried to tell of the horrors of a 
night journey in an ambulance or transport; careful 
driving is out of the question. Near the front the 
ambulance can have no lights, and the roads every- 
where have been torn up by shells. 

Men die in transit, and, dying, hark back to early 
days. They call for their mothers, for their wives. 
They dictate messages that no one can take down. 
Unloaded at railway stations, the dead are separated 
from the living and piled in tiers on trucks. The 
wounded lie about on stretchers on the station floor. 
Sometimes they are operated on there, by the light of 
a candle, it may be, or of a smoking lamp. When it 
is a well-equipped station there is the mercy of chloro- 
form, the blessed release of morphia, but more times 
than I care to think of at night, there has been no 
chloroform and no morphia. 

France has sixty hospital trains, England twelve, 
Belgium not so many. 

I have seen trains drawing in with their burden of 
wounded men. They travel slowly, come to a gradual 



332 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

stop, without jolting or jarring; but instead of the 
rush of passengers to alight, which usually follows the 
arrival of a train, there is silence, infinite quiet. 
Then, somewhere, a door is unhurriedly opened. May- 
be a priest alights and looks about him. Perhaps it is 
a nurse who steps down and takes a comprehensive 
survey of conditions. There is no talking, no uproar. 
A few men may come up to assist in lifting out the 
stretchers, an ambulance driver who salutes and in- 
dicates with a gesture where his car is stationed. There 
are no onlookers. This is business, the grim business 
of war. The line of stretchers on the station platform 
grows. The men lie on them, impassive. They have 
waited so long. They have lain on the battlefield, in 
the trench, behind the line at the dressing shed, wait- 
ing, always waiting. What is a little time more or 
less, now? 

The patience of the injured ! I have been in many 
hospitals. I have seen pneumonia and typhoid patients 
lying in the fearful apathy of disease. They are very 
sad to see, very tragic, but their patience is the lethargy 
of half consciousness. Their fixed eyes see visions. 
The patience of the wounded is the resignation of alert 
faculties. 

Once I saw a boy dying. He was a dark-haired, 
brown-eyed lad of eighteen. He had had a leg shat- 
tered the day before, and he had lain for hours unat- 
tended on the battlefield. The leg had been amputated, 
and he was dying of loss of blood. 

He lay alone, in a small room of what had once 
been a girls' school. He had asked to be propped up 
with pillows, so that he could breathe. His face was 
grey, and only his eyes were alive. They burned like 
coals. He was alone. The hospital was crowded, and 



THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 333 

there were others who could be saved. So he lay there, 
propped high, alone, and as conscious as I am now, 
and waited. The nurse came back at last, and his eyes 
greeted her. 

There seemed to be nothing that I could do. Before 
his conscious eyes I was an intruder, gazing at him in 
his extremity. I went away. And now and then, 
when I hear this talk of national honour, and am car- 
ried away with a hot flame of resentment so that I, too, 
would cry for war, I seem to see that dying boy's eyes, 
looking through the mists that are vengeance and 
hatred and affronted pride, to war as it is — the end 
of hope, the gate of despair and agony and death. 

After my return I received these letters. The woman 
who wrote them will, I know, forgive me for publish- 
ing extracts from them. She is a Belgian, married 
to an American. More clearly than any words of 
mine, they show where falls the burden of war : 

"I have just learned that my youngest brother has 
been killed in action in Flanders. King Albert dec- 
orated him for conspicuous bravery on April 22d, and 
my poor boy went to his reward on April 26th. In 
my leaden heart, through my whirling brain, your 
words keep repeating themselves : 'For King and Coun- 
try !' Yes, he died for them, and died a hero ! I know 
only that his regiment, the Grenadiers, was decimated. 
My poor little boy ! God pity us all, and save martyred 
Belgium !" 

In a second letter : 

"I enclose my dear little boy's obituary notice. He 
died at the head of his company and five hundred and 
seventy-four of his Grenadiers went down with him. 
Their regiment effectively checked the German ad- 
vance, and in recognition General Joffre pinned the 



334 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

Cross of the Legion of Honour to his regimental col- 
ours. But we are left to mourn — though I do not 
begrudge my share of sorrow. The pain is awful, and 
I pray that by the grace of God you may never know 
what it means." 

For King and Country! 

The only leaven in this black picture of war as I 
have seen it, as it has touched me, has been the scarlet 
of the Red Cross. To a faith that the terrible scenes 
at the front had almost destroyed, came every now 
and then again the flash of the emblem of mercy. 
Hope, then, was not dead. There were hands to 
soothe and labour, as well as hands to kill. There was 
still brotherly love in the world. There was a courage 
that was not of hate. There was a patience that was 
not a lying in wait. There was a flag that was not of 
one nation, but of all the world ; a flag that needed no 
recruiting station, for the ranks it led were always 
full to overflowing; a flag that stood between the 
wounded soldier and death; that knew no defeat but 
surrender to the will of the God of Battles. 

And that flag I followed. To the front, to the field 
hospitals behind the trenches, to railway stations, to 
hospital trains and ships, to great base hospitals. I 
watched its ambulances on shelled roads. I followed its 
brassards as their wearers, walking gently, carried 
stretchers with their groaning burdens. And, what- 
ever may have failed in this war — treaties, ammuni- 
tion, elaborate strategies, even some of the humanities 
— the Red Cross as a symbol of service has never 
failed. 

I was a critical observer. I am a graduate of a 
hospital training-school, and more or less for years I 
have been in touch with hospitals. I myself was en- 






THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 335 

rolled under the Red Cross banner. I was prepared 
for efficiency. What I was not prepared for was the 
absolute self-sacrifice, the indifference to cost in effort, 
in very life itself, of a great army of men and women. 
I saw English aristocrats scrubbing floors; I found 
American surgeons working day and night under the 
very roar and rattle of guns. I found cultured women 
of every nation performing the most menial tasks. 
I found an army where all are equal — priests, surgeons, 
scholars, chauffeurs, poets, women of the stage, young 
girls who until now have been shielded from the very 
name of death — all enrolled under the red badge of 
mercy. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 
IN TERMS OF LIFE AND DEATH 



/^NE of the first hospitals I saw was in Calais. 
^-^ We entered a muddy courtyard through a gate, 
and the building loomed before us. It had been a 
girls' convent school, and was now a military hospital 
for both the French and British armies, one half the 
building being used by each. It was the first war hos- 
pital I had seen, and I was taken through the building 

by Major S , of the Royal Army Medical Corps. 

It was morning, and the corridors and stairs still bore 
the mud of the night, when the ambulances drive into 
the courtyard and the stretchers are carried up the 
stairs. It had been rather a quiet night, said Major 

S •. The operations were already over, and now 

the work of cleaning up was going on. 

He opened a door, and we entered a long ward. 

I live in a great manufacturing city. Day by day 
its mills take their toll in crushed bodies. The sight 
of broken humanity is not new to me. In a general 
way, it is the price we pay for prosperity. Individ- 
ually, men so injured are the losers in life's great 
struggle for food and shelter. 

I had never before seen men dying of an ideal. 

There is a terrible sameness in war hospitals. There 
are rows of beds, and in them rows of unshaven, white- 
faced men. Some of them turn and look at visitors. 

336 



IN TERMS OF LIFE AND DEATH 337 

Others lie very still, with their eyes fixed on the 
ceiling, or eternity, or God knows what. Now and 
then one is sleeping. 

"He has slept since he came in," the nurse will 
say; "utter exhaustion." 

Often they die. If there is a screen, the death takes 
place decently and in order, away from the eyes of 
the ward. But when there is no screen, it makes little 
difference. What is one death to men who have seen 
so many? 

Once men thought in terms of a day's work, a 
night's sleep, of labour and play and love. But all 
over Europe to-day, in hospital and out, men are learn- 
ing to think in terms of life and death. What will be 
the result ? A general brutalising ? The loss of much 
that is fine ? Perhaps. There are some who think that 
it will scourge men's souls clean of pettiness, teach 
them proportion, give them a larger outlook. But is it 
petty to labour and love? Is the duty of the nation 
greater than the duty of the home? Is the nation 
greater than the individual ? Is the whole greater than 
the sum of its parts? 

Ward after ward. Rows of quiet men. The occa- 
sional thump of a convalescent's crutch. The swish of 
a nurse's starched dress. The strangled grunt of a 
man as the dressing is removed from his wound. The 
hiss of coal in the fireplace at the end of the ward. 
Perhaps a priest beside a bed, or a nun. Over all, the 
heavy odour of drugs and disinfectants. Brisk nurses 
go about, cheery surgeons, but there is no real cheer. 
The ward is waiting. 

I saw a man who had been shot in the lungs. His 
lungs were filled with jagged pieces of steel. He was 
inhaling oxygen from a tank. There was an inhaler 



338 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

strapped over his mouth and nostrils, and the oxygen 
passed through a bottle of water, to moisten it before 
it entered his tortured lungs. 

The water in the bottle seethed and bubbled, and the 
man lay and waited. 

He was waiting for the next breath. Above the 
mask his eyes were fixed, intent. Would it come? Ah, 
that was not so bad. Almost a full breath that time. 
But he must have another, and another. 

They are all waiting ; for death, maybe ; for home ; 
for health again, or such travesty of health as may 
come, for the hospital is not an end but a means. It is 
an interval. It is the connecting link between the 
trenches and home, between war and peace, between 
life and death. 

That one hospital had been a school. The children's 
lavatory is now the operating room. There are rows 
of basins along one side, set a trifle low for childish 
hands. When I saw them they were faintly rimmed 
with red. There was a locker room too. Once these 
lockers had held caps, no doubt, and overshoes, balls 
and other treasures. Now they contained torn and 
stained uniforms, weapons, knapsacks. 

Does it matter how many wards there were, or how 
many surgeons ? Do figures mean anything to us any 
more? When we read in the spring of 191 5 that the 
British Army, a small army compared with the others, 
had lost already in dead, wounded and missing more 
than a quarter of a million men we could not visualise 
it. Multiply one ward by infinity, one hospital by 
thousands, and then try to realise the terrible by-prod- 
ucts of war! 

In that Calais hospital I saw for the first time the 
apparatus for removing bits of shell and shrapnel di- 



IN TERMS OF LIFE AND DEATH 339 

rectly under the X-ray. Four years ago such a pro- 
cedure would have been considered not only marvelous 
but dangerous. 

At that time, in Vienna and Berlin, I saw men with 
hands hopelessly burned and distorted as the result 
of merely taking photographic plates with the X-ray. 
Then came in lead-glass screens — screens of glass 
made with a lead percentage. 

Now, as if science had prepared for this great emer- 
gency, operators use gloves saturated with a lead solu- 
tion, and right-angled instruments, and operate directly 
in the ray. For cases where immediate extraction is 
inadvisable or unnecessary there is a stereoscopic ar- 
rangement of plates on the principle of our familiar 
stereoscope, which shows an image with perspective 
and locates the foreign body exactly. 

One plate I saw had a story attached to it. 

I was stopping in a private house where a tall Bel- 
gian surgeon lived. In the morning, after breakfast, 
I saw him carefully preparing a tray and carrying it 
upstairs. There was a sick boy, still in his teens, up 
there. As I passed the door I had seen him lying there, 
gaunt and pale, but plainly convalescent. 

Happening to go up shortly after, I saw the tall 
surgeon by the side of the bed, the tray on his knees. 
And later I heard the story : 

The boy was his son. During the winter he had been 
injured and taken prisoner. The father, in Calais, got 
word that his boy was badly injured and lying in a 
German hospital in Belgium. He was an only son. 

I do not know how the frenzied father got into 
Belgium. Perhaps he crept through the German lines. 
He may have gone to sea and landed on the sand dunes 
near Zeebrugge. It does not matter how, for he 



340 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

found his boy. He went to the German authorities and 
got permission to move him to a private house. The 
boy was badly hurt. He had a bullet in the wall of the 
carotid artery, for one thing, and a fractured thigh. 
The father saw that his recovery, if it occurred at all, 
would be a matter of skillful surgery and unremitting 
care, but the father had a post at Calais and was badly 
needed. 

He took a wagon to the hospital and got his boy. 
Then he drove, disguised I believe as a farmer, over 
the frontier into Holland. The boy was covered in 
the bottom of the wagon. In Holland they got a 
boat and went to Calais. All this, with that sharp- 
pointed German bullet in the carotid artery! And at 
Calais they took the plate I have mentioned and got 
out the bullet. 

The last time I saw that brave father he was sitting 
beside his son, and the boy's hand was between both 
of his. 

Nearly all the hospitals I saw had been schools. In 
one that I recall, the gentle- faced nuns, who by edict 
no longer exist in France, were still living in a wing 
of the school building. They had abandoned their 
quaint and beautiful habit for the ugly dress of the 
French provinces — odd little bonnets that sat gro- 
tesquely on the tops of their heads, stuffy black dresses, 
black cotton gloves. They would like to be useful, 
but they belonged to the old regime. 

Under their bonnets their faces were placid, but their 
eyes were sad. Their schoolrooms are hospital wards, 
the tiny chapel is piled high with supplies; in the re- 
fectory, where decorous rows of small girls were wont 
to file in to the convent meals, unthinkable horrors of 
operations go on all day and far into the night. The 



IN TERMS OF LIFE AND DEATH 341 

Hall of the Holy Rosary is a convalescent room, where 
soldiers smoke and play at cards. The Room of the 
Holy Angels contains a steriliser. Through the corri- 
dors that once re-echoed to the soft padding of their 
felt shoes brisk English nurses pass with a rustle of 
skirts. 

Even the cross by which they lived has turned red, 
the colour of blood. 



CHAPTER XXXV 
THE LOSING GAME 



SAW a typhoid hospital in charge of two women 
■*■ doctors. It was undermanned. There were not 
enough nurses, not enough orderlies. 

One of the women physicians had served through 
the Balkan war. 

"There was typhoid there," she said, "but nothing to 
compare with this in malignancy. Nearly all the cases 
have come from one part of Belgium." 

Some of the men were wounded, in addition to the 
fever. She told me that it was impossible to keep 
things in proper order with the help they had. 

"And food !" she said. "We cannot have eggs. They 
are prohibitive at twenty-five centimes — five cents — i 
each ; nor many broths. Meat is dear and scarce, and 
there are no chickens. We give them stewed macaroni 
and farinaceous things. It's a terrible problem." 

The charts bore out what she had said about the 
type of the disease. They showed incredible tem- 
peratures, with the sudden drop that is perforation or 
hemorrhage. 

The odour was heavy. Men lay there, far from 
home, babbling in delirium or, with fixed eyes, picking 
at the bed clothes. One was going to die that day. 
Others would last hardly longer. 

"They are all Belgians here," she said. "The Brit- 
'342 



THE LOSING GAME 343 

ish and French troops have been inoculated against 
typhoid/' 

So here again the Belgians were playing a losing 
game. Perhaps they are being inoculated now. I do 
not know. To inoculate an army means much money, 
and where is the Belgian Government to get it? It 
seems the tragic irony of fate that that heroic little 
army should have been stationed in the infested terri- 
tory. Are there any blows left to rain on Belgium? 

In a letter from the Belgian lines the writer 
says: 

"This is just a race for life. The point is, which 
will get there first, disease and sickness caused by 
drinking water unspeakably contaminated, or sterilis- 
ing plants to avoid such a disaster." 

Another letter from a different writer, also in- Bel- 
gium at the front, says : 

"A friend of mine has just been invalided home with 
enteritis. He had been drinking from a well with a 
dead Frenchman in it!" 

The Belgian Soldiers' Fund in the spring of 191 5 
sent out an appeal, which said: 

"The full heat of summer will soon be upon the 
army, and the dust of the battlefield will cause the 
men to suffer from an intolerable thirst." 

This is a part of the appeal : 

"It is said that out of the 27,000 men who gave their 
lives in the South African war 7000 only were killed, 
whilst 20,000 died of enteritis, contracted by drinking 
impure water. 

"In order to save their army from the fatal effects 
of contaminated water, the Belgian Army medical au- 
thorities have, after careful tests, selected the follow- 
ing means of sterilisation — boiling, ozone and violet 



344 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

rays — as the most reliable methods for obtaining large 
supplies of pure water rapidly. 

"Funds are urgently needed to help the work of 
providing and distributing a pure water supply in the 
following ways: 

"i. By small portable sterilising plants for every 
company to produce and distribute from twenty to a 
hundred gallons of pure cold water per hour. 

"2. By sterilisers easy of adjustment for all field 
hospitals, convalescent homes, medical depots, and so 
forth. 

"3. By large sterilising plants, capable of produc- 
ing from 150 gallons upward per hour, to provide a 
pure water supply for all the devastated towns through 
which the army must pass. 

"4. By the sterilisation of contaminated pools and 
all surface water, under the direction of leading scien- 
tific experts who have generously offered their services. 

"5. By pocket filters for all who may have to 
work out of reach of the sterilising plants, and so 
forth. 

"6. By two hundred field kitchens on the battlefield 
to serve out soup, coffee or other drinks to the men 
fighting in the trenches or on the march." 

Everywhere, at the front, I found the gravest appre- 
hension as to water supply in case the confronting 
armies remained in approximately the same position. 
Sir John French spoke of it, and the British are pro- 
viding a system of sterilised water for their men. 
Merely providing so many human beings with water is 
a tremendous problem. Along part of the line, quite 
aside from typhoid contamination, the water is now 
impregnated with salt water from the sea. If even 
wells contain dead bodies, how about the open water- 



THE LOSING GAME 



345 



courses ? Wounded men must have water. It is their 
first and most insistent cry. 

People will read this who have never known the 
thirst of the battlefield or the parched throat that fol- 
lows loss of blood; people who, by the turning of a 
tap, may have all the water they want. Perhaps 
among them there are some who will face this problem 
of water as America has faced Belgium's problem of 
food. For the Belgian Army has no money at all for 
sterilisers, for pocket filters ; has not the means to in- 
oculate the army against typhoid; has little of any- 
thing. The revenues that would normally support the 
army are being collected — in addition to a war in- 
demnity — by Germany. 

Any hope that conditions would be improved by a 
general spring movement into uncontaminated terri- 
tory has been dispelled. The war has become a gi- 
gantic siege, varied only by sorties and assaults. As 
long ago as November, 1914, the situation as to drink- 
ing water was intolerable. I quote again from the 
diary taken from the body of a German officer after 
the battle of the Yser — a diary published in full in an 
earlier chapter. 

"The water is bad, quite green, indeed ; but all the 
same we drink it — we can get nothing else. Man is 
brought down to the level of the brute beast." 

There is little or no typhoid among the British 
troops. They, too, no doubt, have realised the value 
of conservation, and to inoculation have added careful 
supervision of wells and of watercourses. But when I 
was at the front the Belgian Army of fifty thousand 
trained soldiers and two hundred thousand recruits 
was dependent on springs oozing from fields that were 
vast graveyards; on sluggish canals in which lay the 



346 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

bodies of men and horses ; and on a few tank wagons 
that carried fresh water daily to the front. 

A quarter of a million dollars would be needed to 
install a water supply for the Belgian Army and for 
the civilians — residents and refugees — gathered behind 
the lines. To ask the American people to shoulder 
this additional burden is out of the question. But 
perhaps, somewhere among the people who will read 
this, there is one great-hearted and wealthy American 
who would sleep better of nights for having lifted to 
the lips of a wounded soldier the cup of pure water 
that he craves ; for having furnished to ten thousand 
wounds a sterile and soothing wet compress. 

Dunkirk was full of hospitals when I was there. 
Probably the subsequent shelling of the town destroyed 
some of them. I do not know. A letter from Calais, 
dated May 21st, 191 5, says: 

"I went through Dunkirk again. Last time I was 
there it was a flourishing and busy market day. This 
time the only two living souls I saw were the soldiers 
who let us in at one gate and out at the other. In the 
interval, as you know, the town had been shelled by 
fifteen-inch guns from a distance of twenty-three miles. 
Many buildings in the main streets had been reduced 
to ruins, and nearly all the windows in the town had 
been smashed." 

There is, or was, a converted Channel steamer at 
Dunkirk that is now a hospital. Men in all stages of 
mutilation are there. The salt winds of the Channel 
blow in through the open ports. The boat rises and 
falls to the swell of the sea. The deck cabins are 
occupied by wounded officers, and below, in the long 
saloon, are rows of cots. 

I went there on a bright day in February. There 



THE LOSING GAME 347 

was a young officer on the deck. He had lost a leg 
at the hip, and he was standing supported by a crutch 
and looking out to sea. He did not even turn his head 
when we approached. 

General M , the head of the Belgian Army 

medical service, who had escorted me, touched him on 
the arm, and he looked round without interest. 

"For conspicuous bravery!" said the General, and 
showed me the medal he wore on his breast. 

However, the young officer's face did not lighten, 
and very soon he turned again to the sea. The time 
will come, of course, when the tragedy of his mutila- 
tion will be less fresh and poignant, when the Order of 
Leopold on his breast will help to compensate for 
many things ; but that sunny morning, on the deck of 
the hospital ship, it held small comfort for him. 

We went below. At our appearance at the top of 
the stairs those who were convalescent below rose and 
stood at attention. They stood in a line at the foot 
of their beds, boys and grizzled veterans, clad in motley 
garments, supported by crutches, by sticks, by a hand 
on the supporting back of a chair. Men without a 
country, where were they to go when the hospital ship 
had finished with them ? Those who were able would 
go back to the army, of course. But what of that 
large percentage who will never be whole again ? The 
machinery of mercy can go so far, and no farther. 
France cannot support them. Occupied with her own 
burden, she has persistently discouraged Belgian ref- 
ugees. They will go to England probably — a kindly 
land but of an alien tongue. And there again they 
will wait. 

The waiting of the hospital will become the waiting 
of the refugee. The Channel coast towns of England 



348 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

are full of human derelicts who stand or sit for hours, 
looking wistfully back toward what was once home. 

The story of the hospitals is not always gloomy. 
Where the surroundings are favourable, defeat is 
sometimes turned to victory. Tetanus is being fought 
and conquered by means of a serum. The open treat- 
ment of fractures — that is, by cutting down and ex- 
posing the jagged edges of splintered bones, and then 
uniting them — has saved many a limb. Conservation 
is the watchword of the new surgery, to save whenever 
possible. The ruthless cutting and hacking of previous 
wars is a thing of the past. 

I remember a boy in a French hospital whose leg 
bones had been fairly shattered. Eight pieces, the 
surgeon said there had been. Two linear incisions, 
connected by a centre one, like a letter H, had been 
made. The boy showed me the leg himself, and a 
mighty proud and happy youngster he was. There 
was no vestige of deformity, no shortening. The in- 
cisions had healed by first intention, and the thin, 
white lines of the H were all that told the story. 

As if to offset the cheer of that recovery, a man in 
the next bed was dying of an abdominal injury. I 
saw the wound. May the mother who bore him, the 
wife he loved, never dream of that wound ! 

I have told of the use of railway stations as tem- 
porary resting places for injured soldiers. One is 
typical of them all. As my visit was made during a 
lull in the fighting, conditions were more than usually 
favourable. There was no congestion. 

On a bright afternoon early in March I went to 
the railway station three miles behind the trenches at 

E . Only a mile away a town was being shelled. 

One could look across the fields at the changing roof 



THE LOSING GAME 349 

line, at a church steeple that had so far escaped. But 
no shells were falling in E . 

The station was a small village one. In the room 
corresponding to our baggage-room straw had been 
spread over the floor, and men just out of the trenches 
lay there in every attitude of exhaustion. In a tiny 
room just beyond two or three women were making 
soup. As fast as one kettle was ready it was served 
to the hungry men. There were several kettles — all 
the small stove would hold. Soup was there in every 
state, from the finished product to the raw meat and 
vegetables on a table. 

Beyond was a waiting-room, with benches. Here 
were slightly injured men, bandaged but able to walk 
about. A few slept on the benches, heads lolled back 
against the whitewashed wall. The others were pay- 
ing no attention to the incessant, nearby firing, but 
were watching a boy who was drawing. 

He had a supply of coloured crayons, and the walls 
as high as he could reach were almost covered. There 
were priests, soldier types, caricatures of the German 
Emperor, the arms of France and Belgium — I do not 
remember what all. And it was exceedingly well done. 
The boy was an artist to his finger tips. 

At a clever caricature of the German Emperor the 
soldiers laughed and clapped their hands. While they 
were laughing I looked through an open door. 

Three men lay on cots in an inner room — rather, 
two men and a boy. I went in. 

One of the men was shot through the spine and 
paralysed. The second one had a bullet in his neck, 
and his face already bore the dark flush and anxious 
look of general infection. The boy smiled. 

They had been there since the day before, waiting 



350 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

for a locomotive to come and move the hospital train 
that waited outside. In that railway station the boy- 
had had his leg taken off at the knee. 

They lay there, quite alone. The few women were 
feeding starving men. Now and then one would look 
in to see if there was any change. There was nothing 
to be done. They lay there, and the shells burst in- 
cessantly a mile away, and the men in the next room 
laughed and applauded at some happy stroke of the 
young artist. 

"I am so sorry/' I said to the boy. The others had 
not roused at my entrance, but he had looked at me 
with quick, intelligent eyes. 

"It is nothing !" was his reply. 

Outside, in the village, soldiers thronged the streets. 
The sun was shining with the first promise of spring. 
In an area way regimental butchering was going on, 
and a great sow, escaping, ran frenzied down the street, 
followed by a throng of laughing, shouting men. And 
still the shells fell, across a few fields, and inside the 
station the three men lay and waited. 

That evening at dusk the bombardment ceased, and 
I went through the shelled town. It was difficult to 
get about. Walls had fallen across the way, interiors 
that had been homes gaped open to the streets. Shat- 
tered beds and furnishings lay about — kitchen utensils, 
broken dishes. On some of the walls holy pictures 
still hung, grouped about a crucifix. There are many 
to tell how the crucifix has escaped in the wholesale 
destruction of towns. 

A shoemaker had come back into the village for the 
night, and had opened his shop. For a time he seemed 
to be the only inhabitant of what I had known, a 
short time before, as a prosperous and thriving market 



THE LOSING GAME 351 

town. Then through an aperture that had been a 
window I saw three women sitting round a candle. 
And in the next street I found a man on his knees on 
the pavement, working with bricks and a trowel. 

He explained that he had closed up a small cellar- 
way. His family had no place else to go and were 
coming in from the fields, where they had sought 
safety, to sleep in the cellar for the night. He was 
leaving a small aperture, to be closed with bags of 
sand, so that if the house was destroyed over them 
in the night they could crawl out and escape. 

He knelt on the bricks in front of the house, a 
patient, resigned figure, playing no politics, interested 
not at all in war and diplomacy, in a way to the sea 
or to a place in the sun — one of the millions who must 
adapt themselves to new and fearsome situations and 
do their best. 

That night, sitting at dinner in a hotel, I saw two 
pretty nurses come in. They had been relieved for a 
few hours from their hospital and were on holiday. 

One of them had a clear, although musical voice. 
What she said came to me with great distinctness, and 
what she was wishing for was a glass of American 
soda water! 

Now, long months before I had had any idea of 
going to the war I had read an American correspond- 
ent's story of the evacuation of Antwerp, and of a 
tall young American girl, a nurse, whom the others 
called Morning Glory. He never knew the rest of her 
name. Anyhow, Morning Glory leaped into my mind 
and stayed there, through soup, through rabbit, which 
was called on the menu something entirely different, 
through hard cakes and a withered orange. 

So when a young lieutenant asked permission to 



352 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

bring them over to meet me, I was eager. It was 
Morning Glory! Her name is really Glory, and she 
is a Southern girl. Somewhere among my papers I 
have a snapshot of her helping to take a wounded 
soldier out of an ambulance, and if the correspondent 
wants it I shall send it to him. Also her name, which 
he never knew. And I will verify his opinion that it 
is better to be a Morning Glory in Flanders than to 
be a good many other things that I can think of. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 
HOW AMERICANS CAN HELP 



WITH the possible exception of Germany, which 
seems to have anticipated everything, no one of 
the nations engaged appears to have expected the fear- 
ful carnage of this war. The destructive effect of the 
modern, high-explosive shell has been well known, but 
it is the trench form of warfare which, by keeping 
troops in stationary positions, under grilling artillery 
fire, has given such shells their opportunity. Shrap- 
nel has not been so deadly to the men in the trenches. 

The result of the vast casualty lists has been some 
hundreds of isolated hospitals scattered through 
France, not affiliated with any of the Red Cross so- 
cieties, unorganised, poverty-stricken, frequently hav- 
ing only the services of a surgeon who can come but 
once a week. They have no dressings, no nurses save 
peasants, no bedding, no coal to cook even the scanty 
food that the villagers can spare. 

No coal, for France is facing a coal famine to-day. 
Her coal mines are in the territory held by the Ger- 
mans. Even if she had the mines, where would she 
get men to labour in them, or trains to transport the 
coal? 

There are more than three hundred such hospitals 
scattered through isolated French villages, hospitals 
where everything is needed. For whatever else held 

353 



354 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

fast during the first year of the war, the nursing 
system of France absolutely failed. Some six hundred 
miles of hospital wards there are to-day in France, 
with cots so close together that one can hardly step 
between. It is true that with the passing of time, the 
first chaos is giving way to order. But France, unlike 
England, has the enemy within her boundaries, on her 
soil. Her every resource is taxed. And the need is 
still great. 

The story of the town of D , in Brittany, is very 

typical of what the war has brought into many isolated 
communities. 

D is a little town of two thousand inhabitants, 

with a thirteenth-century church, with mediaeval houses 
with quaint stone porticoes and outside staircases. 
There is one street, shaped like a sickle, with a handle 
that is the station road. 

War was declared and the men of D — ■ — went away. 
The women and children brought in the harvest, and 
waited for news. What little came was discourag- 
ing. 

One day in August one of the rare trains stopped at 
the station, and an inspector got off and walked 
up the sickle-handle to the schoolhouse. He looked 
about and made the comment that it would hold 

eighty beds. Whereupon he went away, and D 

waited for news and gathered the harvest. 

On the fifth of September, 1914, the terrific battle of 
the Marne commenced. The French strategic retreat 
was at an end, and with her allies France resumed the 
offensive. What happened in the little village of 
D ? 

And remember that D is only one of hundreds 

of tiny interior towns. D 1 has never heard of the 



HOW AMERICANS CAN HELP 355 

Red Cross, but D venerated, in its thirteenth-cen- 
tury church, the Cross of Christ. 

This is what happened : 

One day in the first week of September a train drew 
up at the box-like station, a heterogeneous train — 
coaches, luggage vans, cattle and horse cars. The 
doors opened, and the work of emptying the cars be- 
gan. The women and children, aghast and bewildered, 
ran down the sickle-handle road and watched. Four 
hundred wounded men were taken out of the cars, 
laid prone on the station platform, and the train went 
on. 

There were no surgeons in D , but there was a 

chemist who knew something of medicine and who, 
for one reason or another, had not been called to the 
ranks. There were no horses to draw carts. There 
was nothing. 

The chemist was a man of action. Very soon the 
sickle and the old church saw a curious sight. They 
saw women and children, a procession, pushing 
wounded men to the school in the hand carts that 
country people use for milk cans and produce. They 
saw brawny peasant women carrying chairs in which 
sat injured men with lolling heads and sunken 
eyes. 

Bales of straw were brought into the school. Ten- 
der, if unaccustomed, hands washed fearful wounds, 
but there were no dressings, no bandages. 

Any one who knows the French peasant and his 
poverty will realise the plight of the little town. The 
peasant has no reserves of supplies. Life is reduced 
to its simplest elements. There is nothing that is not 
in use. 

D solved part of its problem by giving up its 



356 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

own wooden beds to the soldiers. It tore up its small 
stock of linen, its towels, its dusters ; but the problem 
of food remained. 

There was a tiny stove, on which the three or four 
teachers of the school had been accustomed to cook 
their midday meal. There was no coal, only wood, 
and green wood at that. All day, and all day now, 
D — i — cooks the pot-a-feu for the wounded on that 
tiny stove. Pot-a-feu is good diet for convalescents, 
but the "light diets" must have eggs, broth, whatever 
can be found. 

So the peasant woman of D comes to the hospi- 
tal, bringing a few eggs, the midday meal of her fam- 
ily, who will do without. 

I have spoken mainly in the past tense, but conditions 
in D are not greatly changed to-day. An old mar- 
quise, impoverished by the war, darns the pathetic 
socks of the wounded men and mends their uniforms. 
At the last report I received, the corridors and school- 
rooms were still filled — every inch of space — with 
a motley collection of beds, on which men lay in 
their uniforms, for lack of other clothing. They were 
covered with old patchwork quilts, with anything that 
can be used. There were, of course, no sheets. All the 
sheets were used long ago for dressings. A friend of 
mine there recently saw a soldier with one leg, in the 
kitchen, rolling wretched scraps and dusters for band- 
ages. There was no way to sterilise them, of course. 
Once a week a surgeon comes. When he goes away 
he takes his instruments with him. 

This is not an isolated case, nor an exaggerated one. 
There are things I do not care to publish. Three 
hundred and more such hospitals are known. The 
French Government pays, or will pay, twenty-five 



HOW AMERICANS CAN HELP 357 

cents a day to keep these men. Black bread and pot-a- 
feu is all that can be managed on that amount. 

Convalescents sit up in bed and painfully unravel 
their tattered socks for wool. They tie the bits to- 
gether, often two or three inches in length, and knit 
new feet in old socks, or — when they secure enough — 
new socks. For the Germans hold the wool cities of 
France. Ordinarily worsted costs eighteen and nine- 
teen francs in Dinard and Saint Malo, or from three 
dollars and sixty cents to three dollars and eighty 
cents a pound. Much of the government reserves of 
woollen underwear for the soldiers was in the captured 
towns, and German prisoners have been found wear- 
ing woollens with the French Government stamp. 

Every sort of building is being used for these iso- 
lated hospitals — garages, town halls, private dwellings, 
schools. At first they had no chloroform, no instru- 
ments. There are cases on record where automobile 
tools were used in emergency, kitchen knives, saws, 
anything. In one case, last spring, two hundred con- 
valescents, leaving one of these hospitals on a cold day 
in March, were called back, on the arrival of a hun- 
dred freshly wounded men, that every superfluous 
bandage on their wounds might be removed, to be used 
again. 

Naturally, depending entirely on the unskilled 
nursing of the village women, much that we regard as 
fundamental in hospital practice is ignored. Wounded 
men, typhoid and scarlet fever cases are found in the 
same wards. In one isolated town a single clinical 
thermometer is obliged to serve for sixty typhoid and 
scarlet fever patients.* 

Sometimes the men in these isolated and ill-equipped 

* Written in June, 1915. 



358 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

refuges realise the horror and hopelessness of their 
situation. The nights are particularly bad. Any one 
who knows hospitals well, knows the night terrors of 
the wards; knows, too, the contagion of excitement 
that proceeds from a hysterial or delirious patient. 

In some of these lonely hospitals hell breaks loose at 
night. The peasant women must sleep. Even the tire- 
less nuns cannot labour forever without rest. The men 
have come from battlefields of infinite horror. A 
frenzied dream, a delirious soldier calling them to 
the charge, and panic rages. 

To offset these horrors of the night the peasants 
have, here and there, resorted to music. It is naive, 
pathetic. Where there is a piano it is moved into the 
school, or garage, or whatever the building may be, 
and at twilight a nun or a volunteer musician plays 
quietly, to soothe the men to sleep. In one or two 
towns a village band, or perhaps a lone cornetist, plays 
in the street outside. 

So the days go on, and the nights. Supplies are 
begged for and do not always come. Dressings are 
washed, to be used again and again. 

An attempt is now being made to better these con- 
ditions. A Frenchwoman helping in one of these hos- 
pitals, and driven almost to madness by the outcries of 
men and boys undergoing operations without anaes- 
thetics, found her appeals for help unanswered. She 
decided to go to England to ask her friends there for 
chloroform, and to take it back on the next boat. She 
was successful. She carried back with her, on numer- 
ous journeys, dressings, chloroform, cotton, even a 
few instruments. She is still doing this work. Others 
interested in isolated hospitals, hearing of her suc- 
cess, appealed to her ; and now regular, if small, ship- 



HOW AMERICANS CAN HELP 359 

ments of chloroform and dressings are going across 
the Channel. 

Americans willing to take their own cars, and will- 
ing to work, will find plenty to do in distributing such 
supplies over there. A request has come to me to find 
such Americans. Surgeons who can spare a scalpel, 
an artery clip or two, ligatures — catgut or silk — and 
forceps, may be certain of having them used at 
once. Bandages rolled by kindly American hands will 
not lie unclaimed on the quay at Havre or Calais. 

So many things about these little hospitals of France 
are touching, without having any particular connec- 
tion. There was a surgeon in one of these isolated 
villages, with an X-ray machine but no gloves or lead 
screen to protect himself. He worked on, using the 
deadly rays to locate pieces of shell, bullets and shrap- 
nel, and knowing all the time what would happen. He 
has lost both hands. 

Since my return to America the problems of those 
who care for the sick and wounded have been further 
complicated, among the Allies, by the inhuman use of 
asphyxiating gases. 

Sir John French says of these gases: 

"The effect of this poison is not merely disabling, 
or even painlessly fatal, as suggested in the German 
press. Those of its victims who do not succumb on 
the field and who can be brought into hospitals suffer 
acutely and, in a large proportion of cases, die a pain- 
ful and lingering death. Those who survive are in 
little better case, as the injury to their lungs appears 
to be of a permanent character and reduces them to a 
condition that points to their being invalids for 
life." 

I have received from the front one of the respirators 



3 6o KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

given out to the troops to be used when the gas clouds 
appear. 

"It is prepared with hypophosphite of soda," wrote 
the surgeon who sent it, "and all they have to do be- 
fore putting it on is to dip it in the water in the 
trenches. They are all supplied in addition with gog- 
gles, which are worn on their caps." 

This is from the same letter: 

"That night a German soldier was brought in 
wounded, and jolly glad he was to be taken. He told 
us he had been turned down three times for phthisis — 
tuberculosis — and then in the end was called up and 
put into the trenches after eight weeks' training. All 
of which is very significant. Another wounded Ger- 
man told the men at the ambulance that they must 
move on as soon as they could, as very soon the Ger- 
mans would be in Calais. 

"All the German soldiers write home now on the 
official cards, which have Calais printed on the top 
of them!" 

Not all. I have before me a card from a German 
officer in the trenches in France. It is a good-natured 
bit of raillery, with something of grimness underneath. 

"Dear Madame: 

" T nibble them' — Joffre. See your article in the 
Saturday Evening Post of May 29th, 191 5. Really, 
Joffre has had time ! It is September now, and we are 
not nibbled yet. Still we stand deep in France. Au 
revoir a Paris, Madame." 

He signs it "Yours truly," and then his name. 
Not Calais, then, but Paris! 



CHAPTER XXXVII 
AN ARMY OF CHILDREN 



[" T is undeniably true that thq humanities are failing 
-*- us as the war goes on. Not, thank God, the broad 
humanity of the Red Cross, but that individual com- 
passion of a man for his wounded brother, of which 
the very fabric of mercy is woven. There is too 
much death, too much suffering. Men grow calloused. 
As yet the loss is not irretrievable, but the war is still 
only a matter of months. What if it is to be of 
years ? 

France and Belgium were suffering from a wave 
of atheism before the war. But there comes a 
time in the existence of nations, as in the lives of 
individuals, when human endeavour seems useless, 
when the world and the things thereof have failed. At 
such time nations and individuals alike turn at last to 
a Higher Power. France is on her knees to-day. Her 
churches are crowded. Not perhaps since the days of 
chivalry, when men were shriven in the churches be- 
fore going out to battle, has France so generally knelt 
and bowed her head — but it is to the God of Battles 
that she prays. 

On her battlefields the priests have most signally dis- 
tinguished themselves. Some have exchanged the sou- 
tane for the uniform, and have fought bravely and 
well. Others, like the priests who stood firm in 

36i 



362 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

the midst of Jordan, have carried their message of 
hope to the dying into the trenches. 

No article on the work of the Red Cross can be 
complete without a reference to the work of these 
priests, not perhaps affiliated with the society, but do- 
ing yeoman work of service among the wounded. 
They are everywhere, in the trenches or at the out- 
posts, in the hospitals and hospital trains, in hundreds 
of small villages, where the entire community plus its 
burden of wounded turns to the cure for everything, 
from advice to the sacrament. 

In prostrate Belgium the demands on the priests 
have been extremely heavy. Subjected to insult, injury 
and even death during the German invasion, where in 
one diocese alone thirteen were put to death — their 
churches destroyed, or used as barracks by the enemy 
■■ — that which was their world has turned to chaos 
about them. Those who remained with their conquered 
people have done their best to keep their small com- 
munities together and to look after their material 
needs — which has, indeed, been the lot of the priests of 
battle-scarred Flanders for many generations. 

Others have attached themselves to the hospital serv- 
ice. All the Belgian trains of wounded are cared for 
solely by these priests, who perform every necessary 
service for their men, and who, as I have said before, 
administer the sacrament and make coffee to cheer 
the flagging spirits of the wounded, with equal cour- 
age and resource. 

Surgeons, nurses, priests, nuns, volunteer workers 
who substitute for lack of training both courage and 
zeal, these are a part of the machinery of mercy. 
There is another element — the boy scouts. 

During the early days of the war the boy scouts 



AN ARMY OF CHILDREN 363 

of England, then on school holiday, did marvellous 
work. Boys of fourteen made repeated trips across 
the Channel, bringing back from France children, in- 
valids, timorous women. They volunteered in the 
hospitals, ran errands, carried messages, were as useful 
as only willing boys can be. They did scout service, 
too, guarding the railway lines and assisting in watch- 
ing the Channel coast; but with the end of the holi- 
day most of the English boy scouts were obliged to go 
back to school. Their activities were not over, but 
they were largely curtailed. 

There were five thousand boy scouts in Belgium at 
the beginning of the war. I saw them everywhere — 
behind the battle lines, on the driving seats of ambu- 
lances, at the doors of hospitals. They were very 
calm. Because I know a good deal about small boys I 
smothered a riotous impulse to hug them, and spoke to 
them as grown-up to grown-up. Thus approached, 
they met my advances with dignity, but without ex- 
citement. 

And after a time I learned something about them 
from the Chief Scout of Belgium; perhaps it will show 
the boy scouts of America what they will mean to the 
country in time of war. Perhaps it will make them 
realise that being a scout is not, after all, only camp- 
ing in the woods, long hikes, games in the open. The 
long hikes fit a boy for dispatch carrying, the camping 
teaches him to care for himself when, if necessity 
arises, he is thrown on the country, like his older 
brother, the fighting man. 

A small cog, perhaps, in the machinery of mercy, 
but a necessary one. A vital cog in the vast machinery 
of war — that is the boy scout to-day. 

The day after the declaration of war the Belgian 



364 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

scouts were mobilised, by order of the minister of 
war — five thousand boys, then, ranging in age from 
twelve to eighteen, an army of children. What a 
sight they must have been! How many grown-ups 
can think of it with dry eyes? What a terrible emer- 
gency was this, which must call the children into 
battle ! 

They were placed at the service of the military au- 
thorities, to do any and every kind of work. Some, 
with ordinary bicycles or motorcyles, were made dis- 
patch riders. The senior scouts were enlisted in the 
regular army, armed, and they joined the soldiers in 
barracks. The younger boys, between thirteen and 
sixteen, were letter-carriers, messengers in the differ- 
ent ministries, or orderlies in the hospitals that were 
immediately organised. Those who could drive auto- 
mobiles were given that to do. 

Others of the older boys, having been well trained 
in scouting, were set to watch points of importance, 
or given carbines and attached to the civic guard. 
During the siege of Liege between forty and fifty boy 
scouts were constantly employed carrying food and 
ammunition to the beleaguered troops. 

The Germans finally realised that every boy scout 
was a potential spy, working for his country. The 
uniform itself then became a menace, since boys wear- 
ing it were frequently shot. The boys abandoned it, 
the older ones assuming the Belgian uniform and the 
younger ones returning to civilian dress. But al- 
though, in the chaos that followed the invasion and 
particularly the fall of Liege, they were virtually dis- 
banded, they continued their work as spies, as dispatch 
riders, as stretcher-bearers. 

There are still nine boy scouts with the famous 



AN ARMY OF CHILDREN 365 

Ninth Regiment, which has been decorated by the 
king. 

One boy scout captured, single-handed, two Ger- 
man officers. Somewhere or other he had got a re- 
volver, and with it was patrolling a road. The offi- 
cers were lost and searching for their regiments. As 
they stepped out of a wood the boy confronted them, 
with his revolver levelled. This happened near Liege. 

Trust a boy to use his wits in emergency ! Here is 
another lad, aged fifteen, who found himself in Liege 
after its surrender, and who wanted to get back to the 
Belgian Army. He offered his services as stretcher- 
bearer in the German Army, and was given a German 
Red Cross pass. Armed with this pass he left Liege, 
passed successfully many sentries, and at last got to 
Antwerp by a circuitous route. On the way he found 
a dead German and, being only a small boy after all, 
he took off the dead man's stained uniform and bore 
it in his arms into Antwerp ! 

There is no use explaining about that uniform. If 
you do not know boys you will never understand. If 
you do, it requires no explanation. 

Here is a fourteen-year-old lad, intrusted with a 
message of the utmost importance for military head- 
quarters in Antwerp. He left Brussels in civilian 
clothing, but he had neglected to take off his boy scout 
shirt — boy-fashion! The Germans captured him and 
stripped him, and they burned the boy scout shirt. 
Then they locked him up, but they did not find his 
message. 

All day he lay in duress, and part of the night. Per- 
haps he shed a few tears. He was very young, and 
things looked black for him. Boy scouts were being 
shot, remember! But it never occurred to him to 



366 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

destroy the message that meant his death if discovered. 

He was clever with locks and such things, after the 
manner of boys, and for most of the night he worked 
with the window and shutter lock. Perhaps he 
had a nail in his pocket, or some wire. Most 
boys have. And just before dawn he got window 
and shutter opened, and dropped, a long drop, to the 
ground. He lay there for a while, getting his breath 
and listening. Then, on his stomach, he slid 
away into the darkest hour that is just before the 
dawn. 

Later on that day a footsore and weary but tri- 
umphant youngster presented himself at the head- 
quarters of the Belgian Army in Antwerp and insisted 
on seeing the minister of war. Being at last admitted, 
he turned up a very travel-stained and weary little 
boy's foot and proceeded to strip a piece of adhesive 
plaster from the sole. 

Underneath the plaster was the message \ 

War is a thing of fearful and curious anomalies. It 
has shown that humane units may comprise a brutal 
whole; that civilisation is a shirt over a coat of mail. 
It has shown that hatred and love are kindred emo- 
tions, boon companions, friends. It has shown that 
in every man there are two men, devil and saint ; that 
there are two courages, that of the mind, which is 
bravest, that of the heart, which is greatest. 

It has shown that government by men only is not an 
appeal to reason, but an appeal to arms; that on 
women, without a voice to protest, must fall the bur- 
den. It is easier to die than to send a son to death. 

It has shown that a single hatred may infect a 
world, but it has shown that mercy too may spread 



AN ARMY OF CHILDREN 367 

among nations. That love is greater than cannon, 
greater than hate, greater than vengeance ; that it tri- 
umphs over wrath, as good triumphs over evil. 

Direct descendant of the cross of the Christian 
faith, the Red Cross carries onto every battlefield the 
words of the Man of Mercy : 

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain 
mercy. ,, 

On a day in March I went back to England. March 
in England is spring. Masses of snowdrops lined 
the paths in Hyde Park. The grass was green, the 
roads hard and dry under the eager feet of Kitchener's 
great army. They marched gayly by. The drums 
beat. The passers-by stopped. Here and there an 
open carriage or an automobile drew up, and pale 
men, some of them still in bandages, sat and watched. 
In their eyes was the same flaming eagerness, the same 
impatience to get back, to be loosed against the old 
lion's foes. 

All through England, all through France, all 
through the tragic corner of Belgium that remains to 
her, were similar armies drilling and waiting, equally 
young, equally eager, equally resolute. And the thing 
that they were going to I knew. I had seen it in that 
mysterious region that had swallowed up those who 
had gone before; in the trenches, in the operating 
rooms of field hospitals, at outposts where the sentries 
walked hand in hand with death. 

War is not two great armies meeting in the clash 
and frenzy of battle. War is a boy carried on a 
stretcher, looking up at God's blue sky with bewildered 
eyes that are soon to close ; war is a woman carrying 
a child that has been injured by a shell ; war is spirited 
horses tied in burning buildings and waiting for death ; 



3 68 KINGS, QUEENS AND PAWNS 

war is the flower of a race, battered, hungry, bleeding, 
up to its knees in filthy water ; war is an old woman 
burning a candle before the Mater Dolorosa for the 
son she has given. 

For King and Country! 



THE END 



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